ing more remarkable in this story than there is in
scores of our nursery or household tales, in which not only animals but
also inanimate objects are gifted with speech, and in which the love of
the marvellous rises superior to natural laws.

According to Cox, we must understand the myth of the Wolf and Kids thus:
'The wolf is here the night, or the darkness, which tries to swallow up
the seven days of the week, and actually swallows six. The seventh--the
youngest--escapes by hiding herself in the clock-case; in other words,
the week is not quite run out, and before it comes to an end, the mother
of the goats unrips the wolf's stomach and places stones in it in place
of the little goats, who come trooping out, as the days of the week
begin again to run their course.'

Very plausible this, from a comparative mythologist's point of view,
and not easy to dispute--until we find that a similar tale is current
all over the world where clock-cases are even yet unknown. We are told
that the negroes of Georgia have such a legend; that the natives of
Australia have one; that the Zulus have it; that the Indians of North
America and of British Guiana, and the Malays, all have versions of it.
In Brittany it is traceable in the legend of Gargantua; in Germany there
are several variations; and in Greece it finds its counterpart in the
legend of Saturn or Cronus. The Kaffirs tell the same story of a
cannibal, but the way the negroes have it is like this: 'Old Mrs. Sow
had five little pigs, whom she warned against the machinations of Brer
Wolf. Old Mrs. Sow died, and each little pig built a house for himself.
The youngest pig built the strongest house. Brer Wolf, by a series of
stratagems, entrapped and devoured the four elder pigs. The youngest pig
was the wisest, and would not let Brer Wolf come in by the door. He had
to enter by way of the chimney, fell into a great fire the youngest pig
had lighted, and was burned to death.' Here we have no clock-case, and
no resurrection of the victims, but otherwise the _motif_ of the story
is the same. Certainly the negroes did not receive this tale from the
white races, and it seems equally certain that they had no notion of
typifying the dawn or the night, or anything else, but only the popular
notion among nearly all primitive peoples that the youngest is usually
the most specially gifted and blessed.

This is Mr. Lang's view: 'In the tale of the Wolf and the Seven Kids,
the essence is found