dents of many of them that they could only
have originated in a most primitive state of man. "Early man," says
Sir George Cox, "had life, and therefore all things must have life
also. The sun, the moon, the stars, the ground on which he trod, the
clouds, storms, lightnings were all living beings; could he help
thinking that, like himself, they were all conscious beings also?"
Such, according to this authority, was the origin of primary myths,
secondary and tertiary myths arising in the course of time from the
gradual misunderstanding of phrases applied by primitive man to
personified objects. According to Professor Max Mueller, animism, or
the investing all things with life, springs not in the first place
from man's thought, but from the language in which he clothes it. Man,
he says, found himself speaking of all things in words having "a
termination expressive of gender, and this naturally produced in the
mind the corresponding idea of sex." He thus came to invest all
objects with "something of an individual, active, sexual, and at last
personal character." However hard it may be to discover the reason for
the origin of the tendency to animism, the fact is certain that the
tendency is to be found generally existing among savage peoples, and
it would seem that we must accept the national stories which have come
down to us embodying this tendency in grotesque incidents as relics
handed down from the savage days of the people with whom the tales
originated, as the expression of portions of their thought when they
had as yet only attained to such a degree of civilisation as exists
among savages of the present day.

Strange and grotesque as some of the national stories are, they may be
regarded as embodying the fragments of some of man's most primitive
beliefs; and recognising this, it will be impossible to dismiss the
folk-tale as unworthy of careful consideration, nor may it be regarded
as unfitted to afford us, if studied aright, very much more than
merely such amusement as may be derived from its quaint incident and
grotesque plot.

C. J. T.

GAFFER DEATH.

There was once a poor man who had twelve children, and he was obliged
to labour day and night that he might earn food for them. When at
length, as it so happened, a thirteenth came into the world, the poor
man did not know how to help himself, so he ran out into the highway,
determined to ask the firs