word "fiction."

[183] A folk-tale of the Veys, a North African people, explains this
view most graphically in its opening sentences. The narrator begins his
tale by saying: "I speak of the long time past; hear! It is written in
our old-time-palaver-books--I do not say _then_; in old time the Vey
people had no books, but the old men told it to their children and they
kept it; afterwards it was written" (_Journ. Ethnol. Soc._, N.S., vi.
354). A parallel to this comes from Ireland: "What I have told your
honour is true; and if it stands otherwise in books, it's the books
which are wrong. Sure we've better authority than books, for we have it
all handed down from generation to generation" (Kohl's _Travels in
Ireland_, 140).

[184] I am the more willing to take this as my illustration of myth
because, strangely enough, Mr. MacCulloch has omitted it from the
examples he uses in his _Childhood of Fiction_.

[185] _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, i. 166.

[186] Mr. Jeremiah Curtin has collected and published the _Creation
Myths of Primitive America_ (London, 1899), and his introduction is a
specially valuable study of the subject. I printed the Fijian myth from
Williams' _Fiji and Fijians_, i. 204, and the Kumis myth from Lewin's
_Wild Races of South-east India_, 225-6, in my _Handbook of Folklore_,
137-139, and Mr. Lang, in cap. vi. of his _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_
deals with a sufficient number of examples. _Cf._ also Tylor,
_Primitive Culture_, cap. ix.

[187] Grey, _Polynesian Mythology_, 1-15. I have only summarised the
full legend on the lines adopted by Dr. Tylor.

[188] On the Kronos myth consult Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_,
i. 23-31, who gives an admirable summary of the evidence as it at
present stands; Harrison and Verrall, _Mythology and Monuments of Anc.
Athens_, 192; Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, i. 295-323.

[189] Mr. Crawley discovered this story in Mr. Bain's _A Digit of the
Moon_, 13-15, and printed it in his _Mystic Rose_, 33-34.

[190] "The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature," and
"Mr. Gladstone and Genesis," in _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, cap.
iv. and v.

[191] _Adonis, Attis and Osiris_, 4, 25. Mr. Jevons, too, lays stress
upon "the source of errors in religion" as human reason gone astray,
_Introd. to Hist. of Religion_, 463.

[192] Mr. Jevons practically arrives at this conclusion from a
different standpoint. "Beliefs," he says, "are about facts, are
s