ure, and, after
covering it up, all the beasts and birds and insects took possession of
the robbers' castle, and lived there under the beneficent rule of King
Robin.

_Silver Bells_ is, again, a story of a wholly different type, and
charmingly pretty it is, with its new development of the wicked
step-mother--in this case a mother who had married again and hated her
little girl by the first husband. _Elvira, the Sainted Princess_ tells
how the daughter of King Wamba, who had become a Christian unknown to
her father, by her prayers and tears caused his staff to blossom in one
night, after he had determined that unless this miracle were worked by
the God of the Christians she and her lover should be burned.

One fault is to be found with these old stories as remembered and told
by Mr. Sellers; that is, the introduction of modern ideas into the
Old-World fables of a primitive race. Hits at the Jesuits, the
Inquisition, and the government of recent kings take away much of the
glamour of what is undoubtedly folklore. The story of the _Black Hand_
seems to have many varieties. It is somewhat like our stories of Jack
and the Bean Stalk and Bluebeard, but differs, to the advantage of the
Spanish ideal, in that the enchanted prince who is forced to play the
part of the terrible Bluebeard during the day voluntarily enters upon a
second term of a hundred years' enchantment, so as to free the wife whom
he loves, and who goes off safely with her two sisters and numerous
other decapitated beauties, restored to life by the self-immolation of
the prince. The _White Dove_ is another curious and pretty fable which
has many variations in different provinces--a story in which the King's
promise cannot be broken, though it ties him to the hateful negress who
has transformed his promised wife into a dove, and has usurped her
place. Eventually, of course, the pet dove changes into a lovely girl
again, when the King finds and draws out the pins which the negress has
stuck into her head, and the usurper is "burnt" as punishment--an ending
which savours of the _Quemadero_.

The making of folklore is not, however, extinct in Spain, a country
where poetry seems to be an inherent faculty. One is constantly reminded
of the Spanish proverb, _De poetas y de locos, todos tenemos un poco_
(We have each of us somewhat of the poet and somewhat of the fool). No
one can tell whence the rhymed _jeux d'esprit_ come; they seem to spring
spontaneously from th