Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/354

 346 the interior of Africa. He will also see how these events grow till they reach a gigantic development, and how the garment in which they are wrapped changes from place to place, and from mouth to mouth. It is active folk-lore which can be thus pursued through the different shapes the story of a historical event assumes in a short time if spread over a wide surface. The soldiers who fought at Tel-el-Kebir or in Burmah, when returning home, will be also authors of wondrous tales, relating the adventures, the customs of the nations they fought, and they will always have a great and obliged number of listeners gathered around them.

Under these circumstances, if there is anything to wonder at, it is that that the number of formulæ is only such a small one, which, on the other hand, explains also their wandering so far. The stock being small, they were often repeated.

But for a novel or a story to become a fairy-tale one essential character had to be added, the supernatural element, something which is extraordinary, either such an object to be acquired, as water of youth, descent to hell, or the hero is helped by the interference of an unexpected and unaccounted-for assistance, coming from a part whence he never suspected it, thankful animals, saints, &c., or the hero fights a supernatural enemy (dragons, giants, ghosts, who haunt deserted houses) intermixed with various similar incidents.

This is the part I consider to be of a totally independent origin, and only later on blended together with the simple novel, or story or jest, changing it into a fairy tale (conte). This exists previously in the mind of the men who tell fairy-tales, and is derived from different sources, at different epochs, representing the residuum of the knowledge acquired by the upper classes, and which in time penetrates into the lower regions of society and imbues it with vague ideas and some outlines of real knowledge. This mixture is therefore different in different countries, and represents, when studied separately, the national and local colour assumed by the tale when accepted by the people.

To borrow a figure from the fairy tales, I should like to compare it with the mantle of the witch composed of thousands of patches, which when the charm is broken represent each a ground, or a house, or a