by Edwin Sidney Hartland
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[9] Temple, ?Legends of the Panjab,? vol. i. p. v.; Thorburn, p. 172; Leland, p. 12; Taylor, p. 306; ?Beowulf,? lay 16; Tacitus, ?Germania,? cc., 2, 3; ?Ancient Laws and Institutions of Wales? (Public Record Commission, 1841), pp. 15, 35, &c.
[10] Burton, ?Nights,? vol. x. p. 163; ?Revue des Trad. Pop.? vol. iv. p. 6. In Greece and Albania, however, the viol would seem not to be used. Women are the chief reciters. Von Hahn, vol. i. p. ix.
[11] Spitta Bey, p. viii.
[12] Steere, pp. v., vii.
[13] Rink, p. 85; Grimm, ?Märchen,? p. vii.
Transcriber's Note: See Appendix for more detailsSagas and Märchen ? Fairy Tales based upon ideas familiar to savages ? The Doctrine of Spirits ? The Doctrine of Transformation ? Totemism ? Death ? Witchcraft ? The predominance of imagination over reason in savages ? Method of the inquiry.
Fairy Tales, as defined in the previous chapter, fall under two heads. Under the first we may place all those stories which relate to definite supernatural beings, or definite orders of supernatural beings, held really to exist, and the scenes of which are usually laid in some specified locality. Stories belonging to this class do not necessarily, however, deal with the supernatural. Often they are told of historical heroes, or persons believed to have once lived. For instance, the legends of Lady Godiva and Whittington and his Cat, which, however improbable, contain nothing of the supernatural, must be reckoned under this head equally with the story of the Luck of Edenhall, or the Maori tale of the Rending asunder of Heaven and Earth. In other words, this class is by no means confined to Fairy Tales, but includes all stories which are, or at all events have been up to recent years, and in the form in which they come to us, looked upon as narratives of actual occurrences. They are called Sagas. The other class of tales consists of such as are told simply for amusement, like Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and Puss in Boots. They may embody incidents believed in other countries, or in other stages of civilization, to be true in fact; but in the form in which we have them this belief has long since been dropped. In general, the reins are thrown upon the neck of the imagination; and, marvellous though the story be, it cannot fail to find acceptance, because nobody asserts that its events ever took place, and nobody desires to bring down its flights to the level either of logic or experience. Unlike the saga, it binds the conscience neither of teller nor of listener; its hero or heroine has no historical name or fame, either national or local; and being untrammelled either by history or probability, the one condition the tale is expected to fulfil is to end happily. Stories of this class are technically called Märchen: we have no better English name for them than Nursery Tales.
