the
subject: How best to utilize the home as a training school, and yet to
keep it cheerful.

CHAPTER V

MYTHS AND FOLK-LORE

I--INTRODUCTORY

The first meeting should be given up to a broad presentation of the
whole subject of folk-lore, myths, legends, fairy stories, festivals and
superstitions. One paper should present the universality of myths, the
curious resemblances found among them in races far apart in time and
place. A second paper may give the ways in which they have been
preserved to us. The Egyptians as early as 2800 B. C. used the stories
on monuments and in manuscripts. Herodotus and Livy speak of folk-tales;
AEsop's Fables embody many of them. In the Middle Ages story and song
preserved them; and later they were collected. Walter Scott was
especially appreciative of their value; he called them "antiquities,"
and tried to interest people in them in several of his books.

A third paper should deal with the important theories held by scholars
as to the origin of myths. The Grimm brothers in Germany, and later Max
Mueller, held that the similarity of myths proved the common stock and
language of all races; as divisions came the myths passed on from one
country and race to many. Andrew Lang, however, has more recently
developed a second theory, one held to-day by most scientists, that as
all primitive people observe the same phenomena of nature, they invent
much the same myths to explain them, as all pass through the same stages
of culture.

Another paper might notice the growth in the spread of the study of
myths and legends. Since Thorns in 1846 coined the phrase "folk-lore,"
societies have been formed in every civilized land to preserve the old
stories, songs and traditions, and to study them scientifically. Immense
value is placed to-day on their importance as throwing light on history,
literature, religion, and language. One writer says that a full
knowledge of the folk-lore of every nation would be synonymous with the
history of human thought. On the general subject read G. L. Gomme's
Folk-Lore as an Historical Science, Andrew Lang's Modern Mythology, and
the valuable articles in the encyclopedias. For readings from the
stories of all nations, see a set of small handbooks published by
Lippincott, called Folk-Lore and Legend.

II--THE OLDEST MYTHS, THE HINDU

In the earliest Western race, the Aryan, we find the simplest myths of
creation and changing nature. They first invented the