Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/352

 344 these alone show when comparing those of one nation with those of another nation, a similar identity, the want of any radical change.

Once the plot of a tale is reduced to a novel, we have gained firm ground for further inquiry; we know, more or less, the epoch of its introduction into the lore of European nations, and can fix therefore the date of tales as posterior to the time when fable and novel were brought from the Orient, mostly in a literary form, i.e. as a book which was translated and widely circulated, and thus became in time common property of the nations.

Along with these novels there are immense stores of tales of far deeper influence and far greater popularity, but curiously enough not at all taken hitherto into consideration, whence popular fancy has drawn the richest materials, the best-known figures of fairy-tales and romance: I mean the great hagiologic literature of the Middle Ages, the lives and legends of the saints. Many of these offer most interesting material, and were indeed eagerly seized and worked up, the saints thereby becoming changed into heroes of tales from heroes of religion.

It is not difficult to recognize them under their disguise, once our attention is directed to this well-spring of folk-lore.

It is out of place here to enter into a detailed inquiry (which I hope to undertake somewhere else) to show further the enormous influence exercised by the canonical and uncanonical writings by the bible as we have it and by the apocalyptical and pseudo-epigraphical literature joined with the bible in the Middle Ages, full of wondrous and remarkable feats and adventures of the holy personages, be they patriarchs, apostles, or Christ himself, which entered into the soul and mind of the people, enriched their knowledge, and furnished them with the best means for further spinning out the tale.

To better understand how this literature could hold sway over the people, we must remember that for centuries the only instruction was that given by the clergy in the church, and that the books they had access to were religious books: the bible, the spurious writings already mentioned, and the legends of the saints; the same story or the same legend was thus read to the people from the pulpit year