Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/150

112 mind of the peasant would remember, and hand down in tradition, things which were not recorded in history.

Mr. Author:Hugh Nevill wished to explain that the belief that people in Ceylon lived in hollow trees had absolutely no foundation. The Ceylonese word for their habitations really meant "rock cave", and from the fact that the word had been translated into "hollow tree", some of our English historians had said that the Ceylonese lived in trees. Seeing that such a mistake had occurred, the idea suggested itself whether such a thing might not also have happened in folk-lore, and that, for instance, the word "glass tower" had perhaps never had the meaning which we now associated with it.