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 CHAPTER IV

In order to gain an insight into the meaning of the symbols of fairy tales we must first learn something of their origin.

A symbol is a sign, a short cut for something complex. When I see a post-horn near the name of a station on a railway timetable, it is clear to me that the station has postal connections with places which are not on the line.

The "Captain of Köpenik," a shoemaker and habitual criminal, insured himself the unconditional obedience of a number of Prussian soldiers in the robbery of the city bank, by wearing a captain's uniform, because the wearing of a uniform, and especially an officer's uniform, is a sign for a great mass of things and ideas, which it is not necessary to recount.

The symbol, however, has still more that is peculiar to it. Why does the sign of the post-horn and nothing else, represent on the time-table the idea of postal connections and the associated ideas. The post-horn is something that originally belonged to the post. Although it is not a necessary part of it, it was earlier one of the most concrete signs of it, less for the eye than for the ear. So we have two new sources of the symbol. That the sign chosen for the symbol has a significance in an inner or outer associative relationship and is concrete. Further it is so much the more appropriate as history and development are included in it, whereby it is, however, not without variations of significance. The times with us have pretty well gone by when the postillion lustily blew his horn. The horn as a sign, however, has remained, on the time-table, in the army, as the sign of a field post, and still in many other places.

With the idea of symbol there is usually associated something full of mystery. Symbols are often used as signs of recognition for secret societies, for example, the signs of the Free Masons. The secrecy also lays in the fact that only the initiated know the significance of the symbols. That, for example, was the case with the runic writing which only certain people could read; that also gives the ceremonials of the church their magical effects on Rh