homes of the poorer classes, you can have an exhibition of the manner in which this is done. For there the old grand-dame sits down and tells the story of some witch or hobgoblin, just as she received it from her mother or grandmother; and if, by chance, she makes a mistake, or strays off the right path altogether, there is always sure to be some one present, either amongst the girls and boys, or the older folks, who is ready and eager to correct her, and not only give the event that follows next in order, but supply the very words in which it should be told. And so they have been preserved for dear knows how long with so much care as if every one was fully aware that the time was surely coming when the young and old of to-day would find the way to put them to some good use

some way he run together, or get intermingled one with another. Numbers, however, have survived all mishap, and have been very perfectly preserved, while, notwithstanding the changes that others have undergone, they all still retain distinct traces of what they were in the long gone past.

It also surprises one very greatly to learn that each nation was telling very many of the same stories that were being told at the very same time by the others, and that they had been so telling them for many, many centuries. This fact was so singular that it could not but occasion a great deal of surprise, and the attempt to explain the coincidence has led to results that have placed the folklore of these nations in a very different position from that which it held before. For you must remember that all The large majority of the stories that of these nations were not only separated we have been familiar with all our lives, from each other by distance, but that have thus been preserved. They were each spoke its own language, had its not composed for our amusement a few own religion, social laws and customs, years ago, but are as old almost as the and in every way constituted an inhills, and a great deal older than the dependent nation, that they had very oldest cities that are now crumbling to little intercourse with each other, and ruin in Europe and Asia. Not all tales seldom met except on the battle-field, of the fancy which are now written and or when one went to raid on the terripublished are of this character, to be tory of another. If it had been othersure, for many are being composed now wise, there would have been no room and are entirely new, but all the old for surprise, for the simple explanation standard tales such as the Sleeping that one nation derived its folklore Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, and from another would have done away those I have already named, with with the mystery at once. But such an Mother Goose's Melodies, the Arabain explanation will not do, and it has been Nights, the stories told by Grimm, abandoned almost as soon as it was many of those related by Hans Chris- offered. No, there is another reason tian Andersen, those about King Arthur given, and one which far better meets and the Knights of the Round Table, the difficulties of the case, though it and those of the Nibelungenlied, with rather increases than lessens our astonishwhich many of you are doubtless ment. But before I give that, let us familiar. They are not called fairy compare several of these stories so that tales, however, but folklore, because we may be quite certain that there is they seem to be peculiarly the property no mistake about the resemblance. of the common people, and were not will begin with a story that is, no doubt, originated by scholars. Nor are they familiar to many of you, for it belongs related to-day in the exact form in to Grimm's famous collection of German which they first appeared. For, not fairy tales, and is known by the name withstanding the utmost care exercised of Faithful John. to preserve them, they have undergone great changes. Sometimes, no doubt, the narrator deliberately gave a new turn to the series of events he was recounting, or supplied a new character where he thought it was needed. Some times parts of different stories would in

I

Once upon a time there lived a prince who fell desperately in love with a beautiful maiden whose portrait he found hanging in his father's gallery. Having once seen the portrait he cannot be withheld from going to seek her. Loading a ship with costly presents and

second Luxman will just save his friends him, he is overcome with shame and by dragging them forcibly away; but grief, and falling at the feet of the the serpent, the owls said, Luxman would kill with his sword,

"But a drop of blood shall fall on her forehead. The servant will not care to wipe off the blood with his hands, but shall, instead, cover his face with a cloth that he may lick it off with his tongue; and for this Rama will be angry with him, and his reproaches shall turn his poor servant into stone." "Will he always remain stone?" asked the lady owl.

"Not forever," replied the husband, "but for eight long years he will remain so."

"And what then?" demanded she. "Then," answered the other, "when the young prince shall have a son, it shall come to pass that one day the child shall be playing on the floor, and, to help itself along, shall clasp hold of the stony figure, and at the touch of the baby's hand the servant shall come to life again."

silent and senseless statue, clasps its stony knees, and weeps bitterly. Eight years pass on, and at length a child is born. A few months more, and, in trying to walk, the little one stretches out its tiny hands, and catches hold of the foot of the statue, and immediately Luxman comes back to life, and, stooping down, seizes the little baby in his arms and kisses it.

Now, with all the striking points of difference between this story and the one that precedes it, no one can fail to see that, not only in the moral which each teaches, but in the general unfolding of the plot, the two are the same. Yet one is told in Germany and the other in India. The difference is just of that kind which might readily be brought about if some one should attempt to tell in the advanced years of his life a story which he learned in infancy, which though in a general way maintaining its hold on his mind has lost so much of its clearness that in his effort to relate it, he recasts it in a somewhat different form. The most striking features of the story he remembers, the rest has faded away, and so he chooses new names, changes this part and that, adding something here and there from his own imagination; but with all this, still reproducing the old story that he learned in infancy. Perhaps we are not far wrong in supposing that somewhat similar causes actually produced this difference.

Then the owls flew away, and Luxman hurried to rejoin his friends, thinking of the sad fate that awaited him, and puzzling his mind with plans and devices by which he might escape it. All, however, turns out as the owl predicted; and when Luxman sees the deadly serpent approaching the princess. as she and her husband refresh themselves with sleep under the deep shadows of a forest tree, he knows that his life must be forfeited to his devotion. He had prepared himself for the worst, by writing on a roll of paper a record of In Spain, Egypt, India, Scotland, and the owl's talk and of his life-long faith- other countries a number of myths are fulness to his master. This roll he now found which have for their common takes from his bosom and lays beside point of interest, a wonderful thief, the sleeping king. Then seizing his whom no walls are thick enough to sword dispatches the cobra. The prince withstand, no treasures too closely hidstarts up just as Luxman is licking the den to be discovered, and no one wise blood from his wife's forehead, and enough to outwit. The Egyptian story very naturally misunderstanding the is as follows: A certain carpenter whom act overwhelms his servant with sting- the king had employed to build a ing reproaches; Luxman is immediately treasure-house in which he could hide changed into stone.

Then, and not till then, does Rama discover the roll of paper; and when he reads in it the startling facts recorded there, and has brought to mind the unnumbered acts of love and friendship which his faithful servant has, since his earliest youth, constantly shown toward

the wealth that he had wrung from his people by extortion, reveals the secret on his death-bed to the younger of his two sons. The boy tells his brother, and the two resolve to rob the king. They are at first very successful, and carry off much wealth. But when the king discovers that his riches are

diminishing, he sets a trap to catch the Shifty Lad, who cares nothing for any thief, and the younger brother is so unfor- one but himself, stepping in his shouldtunate as to fall into it. At his own re- ers, enters the treasure-house, and after quest the elder brother cuts off his head removing as much wealth as he can and carries it away with him. The king, carry, heartlessly slices off the head of astonished at finding a headless body in his master, in order to save himself from the trap, bids his guards impale it on discovery, and then makes off with it, the wall, laying strict charge upon them leaving the body sticking in the pitch. to bring before him any one whom they The seneschal, whose counsel is asked a might hear mourning for the dead man. second time, advises the king to have When the mother sees her son's body his soldiers set the body aloft on the exposed in this cruel manner, she points of their spears, and in this position threatens to tell the king everything carry it through the streets of the city, unless the corpse is brought back to in order to detect the criminal by the her. Seeing no way of escape from this signs of grief which he may show at the dilemma, the elder brother undertakes sight of the body of his companion. As to steal the body from the guards. they pass the house of the carpenter, Loading several asses with skins full of his wife screams with grief when she wine, he, approaching the guard, slyly thus unexpectedly catches sight of her loosens the string of two or three wine- husband's dead body. But the Shifty skins, and allows the wine to trickle out Lad, with his usual cunning, succeeds in upon the ground. The soldiers, seeing escaping detection by dealing himself a so much good wine running to waste, slight blow with an axe, and then decarelessly desert their post, and while luding the soldiers into the belief that apparently doing their utmost to soothe the outcry of grief was occasioned by the distracted owner, cunningly catch his accident. The body is then hung on the liquor in their cups. This is just a tree, the soldiers receiving strict what the master thief wanted them to do, and he soon has the pleasure of seeing them stretched out at full length on the ground, lost to all the world in drunken sleep. Then the sly rogue takes down the body of his brother and hastens home with it. Again and again the king tries by means of various devices to entrap him, but without success. In the end he is so won by admiration for the skill displayed in frustrating all his best laid schemes, that he bestows the hand of his daughter in marriage upon the very man whose life he had so zealously sought.

Now turn from this to the story as told in Scotland. The thief here is called the Shifty Lad. He has learned his craft from the Black Rogue himself, whom, however, he outwits and puts to death. Then he engages himself to a carpenter, whom he induces to break into the king's storehouse. Discovering the theft, the king consults his seneschal, the superintendent of his household, and is advised by him to place a hogshead of soft pitch near the entrance of his treasure-house. The plan is successful, for the following night the carpenter, in making another venture, sinks into the pitch, and cannot be extricated. So the

orders to arrest any one who should attempt to remove it. But the Shifty Lad is quite equal to the emergency. Driving before him a horse loaded with two kegs of whisky, he approaches the guard as though he wished to steal by them, and when they catch the horse's bridle, he runs off, leaving the whisky in their hands. The soldiers cannot resist the temptation to drink, and are consequently soon wrapt in profound sleep. The Lad then returns, and without difficulty removes the body of his master. The story ends with the marriage of the Shifty Lad and the daughter of the king.

In the story as told in India, there are two brothers, named Gata and Karpara, who break into the king's treasure-house not only to obtain his riches but also to steal his daughter. The elder of the two is caught and hung, but not until he has had an opportunity to request his brother to carry off and save the princess. Karpara's body is then exposed for the purpose of catching his accomplice. The guards are duped in very much the same way in which the Shifty Lad tricks the soldiers, and Gata succeeds in stealing the body of his brother. He burns it

in accordance with the funeral customs of his country, and mourns for his brother by dashing on the ground a Karpara, or pot of rice, and then bewails his loss, exclaiming, "Alas for my precious Karpara!", words which the soldiers naturally apply to the broken pipkin and lost rice. The king makes every effort to catch the thief, but, following the advice of the princess, the two go off into a foreign country where they dwell together in safety.

The points of resemblance and of difference between these stories are of exactly the same nature as those found in the tales of Faithful John, though the character of the Master Thief seems to be much more universally known. While the deeds he performs in one land often differ very widely from those related of him in another. Yet the leading traits of his character are always preserved, and we cannot escape the conviction that we are dealing with the same person. So it is with many other stories.

the Ogre whose castles he found in the skies, the pipe of the piper Hamelius, and also the fiddle which in Grimm's tales forces the Jew to dance a hornpipe amongst the briars and brambles; all of which musical instruments, however they may differ in kind, possessing the marvellous power of the harp of Hermes and Orpheus. Many different nations tell of a wonderful heaven-tree whose roots are in heaven and whose branches reach to the earth, by which ascending heroic men have again and again mounted the skies and brought down to earth some gift greatly needed by the human race. We have the fiery shirt of sulphur and pitch offered to the prince in the story of Faithful John, the fiery shirt which is given to Hercules and which burns him to death, and the fiery shirt in the tales of Arabian Nights. And, alas for all! We have not one William Tell only, but many. In Denmark, in England, in Norway, in Finland, in Russia, in Turkey, and in Persia, the hero appears under various There are tales in many lands of guises. The wild Samoyeds relate the sleeping maidens like Briar Rose; of story, chapter and verse, of one of their men endowed with supernatural strength own marksmen; while all the different and skill, who travel over the world stories correspond in the account of a working prodigies of valor, like Hercules, Samson, St. George, and Jack the Giant Killer, of young men and maidens like Cinderella, who though endowed with surpassing wit and beauty, are condemned by tyrannical relatives to sit in dust and ashes, or hide themselves in obscurity, and who arise and show themselves at intervals, only to return, however, impelled by a power over which they have no control, to their former obscurity; of young knights and princes, who go to the rescue of lovely ladies, guarded in the most awful and mysterious manner from all intrusion, and who succeed in their attempts though scores and hundreds of others as brave as they have perished in the effort. We have not only the wonderful horse Pegasus, and the wonderful horse of the Alhambra, but the wonderful horse of the Arabian Nights, and the wonderful horse ridden by Sculloge, the Irish hero, when he sets out to find the sword of light which will ransom his soul from the power of the devil. We have the harp of Hermes and Orpheus, the harp which Jack stole from

marvellous archer, who, at the command
of a tyrant shoots an apple or a very
small object from the head of a boy,
who is generally his son. In the Eng-
lish ballad of William of Cloudes the
dauntless bowman says:

"I have a sonne seven years old,
He is to me full dere;

I will tie him to a stake

All shall see him that be here-
And lay an apple on his head,

And go six paces him froe,
And I myself with a broad arrowe

Shall cleave the apple in towe."

The Danish tale resembles that of Switzerland almost exactly, with this difference that in the former the archer belongs to the army of the king, who overhears the vain fellow boasting of his ability to shoot an apple from the head of his son, and who then, in a fit of tyranny, compels the poor father to make good his boast. As in the Swiss version the archer hides a second arrow amongst his clothing, and when asked to give the reason for such strange conduct, replies as Tell did to the demand