story of
Polyphemus is really a collection of stories gathered about one central
person; some portions of it have been found in the East as well as the
West, in Arabian and Tartar legend as well as in Celtic and Esthonian.
The subtle play upon the word "nobody" as a name is known far and wide
by many people who never heard of Homer. Wilhelm Grimm took the trouble
to collect a lot of examples from a great variety of sources, ancient,
medieval and modern, European and Asiatic, in a special treatise called
the Legend of Polyphemus. Circe, the enchantress, has been discovered
in a Hindoo collection of Tales belonging in the main to the thirteenth
century of our era; but the witch who has the power of turning men into
animals is as universal as folk-lore itself. The werewolf superstition
will furnish instances without number. The descent into Hades has its
parallel in the Finnish epic _Kalevala_, which reaches far back into
Turanian legend; even the North American and Australian savages have
their heroes enter the world beyond, and bring back an account of what
is there. Truly one of the earliest needs of the human soul is this
striving to find and to shadow forth in mythical outlines the realm of
the supersensible. Dante's Journey through Inferno goes back to Virgil,
Virgil goes back to Homer, and Homer to the folk-tales of his people,
and these folk-tales of Greece reach out to still more remote ages and
peoples. Thus into Christian legend the old heathen stories are
transformed; many descents to Hell and Purgatory, as well as visions of
Heaven are recorded in the Middle Ages. It may be said that folk-tales
have an ancestry as old as man himself, and have followed him
everywhere as his spirit's own shadow, which he casts as his body casts
its visible shadow.

A collection of Fairy Tales we may, then, consider these four Books,
with its giants, cannibals, enchantresses, with its bag of winds, which
is still furnished by the town-witch to the outgoing sailor in some
countries, if report be true. In fact, a little delving among the
people, who are the great depositories of folk-lore, would probably
find some of the stories of the Odyssey still alive, if not in their
completeness, at least some shreds or floating gossamers thereof.
Indestructible is the genuine tale when once made and accepted by the
people, being of their very essence; it is also the primordial material
of which all true poetry is produced, it is nature's Pa