ained the traditional treasures of the people. A story
identical in all the main outlines of plot will be varied in matters
of detail, according to the people who are using it in their daily
routine of story-telling. But this variation is always from the
primitive to the cultured, from the simple to the complex. The
mud-cabin or cave-dwelling in Irish story would have developed into
the palace in stories of a richer country like England; the old woman,
young girl, master and servant, would become perhaps the queen,
princess, king and vassal; just as in Spanish and Portuguese stories
the giant of other European tales is represented by "the Moor." If
this process of change is a factor in the life of the folk-tale, it
follows that those folk-tales which contain the greatest number of
primitive details are the most ancient, and come to us more directly
from the prehistoric times which they represent.

We may gather warrant for such a conclusion if we pass from small
details to a distinct institution. The institution which stands out
most clearly in early history is the tribe, and I will therefore turn
to an element of ancient tribal life, and an element which has to do
with the practical organisation of that life, namely, the tribal
assembly. We find that the folk-tale records under its fairy or
non-historic guise many important recollections of the assembly of the
tribe. One very natural feature of this assembly in early times was
its custom of meeting in the open air--a custom which in later times
still obtained, for reasons which were the outcome of the prejudices
existing in favour of keeping up old customs. These reasons are
recorded in the formula of Anglo-Saxon times, that meetings should not
be held in any building, lest magic might have power over the members
of the assembly.[63]

Before turning to the tales of our own country, I will first see
whether savage and barbaric tales have recorded anything on the
subject, for their picture of the tribal assembly, when revealed in
the folk-tale, belongs to the period which might have witnessed the
making of the story, and which certainly witnessed the tribal
organisation of the people as a living institution. Dr. Callaway, in
his _Nursery Tales and Traditions of the Zulus_, relates a story of
"the Girl-King." "Where there are many young women," says the story,
"they assemble on the river where they live, and appoint a chief over
the young women, that no young woman may