always answered
by the formula, that a crow flew over the chimney and must have dropped
a bone down it; the hero almost always meets three old women, or three
Trolls, or three enchanted beasts or birds, of whom he in that case
always asks the same questions, receiving the same replies, _verbatim_.
There is a reason for this sameness, which is indicative of the rude
condition of the people among whom the tales have been perpetuated; but
the sameness palls none the less upon more cultivated minds. Mr. Dasent
characterizes these people as "an honest and manly race,--not the race
of the towns and cities, but of the dales and fells, free and unsubdued,
holding its own in a country where there are neither lords nor ladies,
but simple men and women. Brave men and fair women," etc. (p. lxviii.)
And he says of the tales, that in no other collection is "the general
tone so chaste, are the great principles of morality better worked out,
and right and wrong kept so steadily in sight." (p. lxii.) We cannot
agree with him in this appreciation of the moral tone of the stories,
many of which certainly speak ill for the honesty and manliness of the
race among which they have been for centuries cherished
household-treasures. For in a large proportion of those that have a
successful hero, he obtains his success either by lying or some kind of
deceit or treachery, by stealing, or by imposing upon the credulity or
feebleness of age; and of those in which the hero is himself victorious
over oppression, we are not able to recollect one which exhibits the
beauty of moderation and magnanimity, not to say of Christian charity
and forgiveness. Mr. Dasent mentions it as an admirable trait of the
tales, that, "in the midst of every difficulty and danger, arises that
old Norse feeling of making the best of everything and keeping a good
face to the foe." Certainly the heroes of these tales do make the best
of everything, but they are not at all scrupulous as to their way of
making it; and they do also keep a good face to the foe, when (often by
craft, theft, or violence) they have obtained some implement or other
gift of supernatural power which places their opponents entirely at
their mercy and with no risk to themselves. But of a manful contest on
equal terms, or of a victory obtained over tyrannous power by a union of
patience, boldness, and honest skill, or even by undegrading stratagem,
the collection affords no instance that we remember.

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