mind it, or goes through and shines on the upper side of the sky, or goes into or behind the moon as the moon is behind it in the day. ..."[1]
Lightning —
"is God putting out his finger, or opening a door, or turning a gas quick, or (very common) striking many matches at once, throwing stones and iron for sparks, setting paper afire, or it is light going outside and inside the sky, and stars falling. God keeps rain in heaven in a big sink, rows of buckets, a big tub or barrels, and they run over, or he lets it down with a water-hose through a sieve, a dipper with holes, or sprinkles or tips it down or turns a faucet."
As for babies,—
God "lets them down or drops them, and the women or doctors catch them, or he leaves them on the side-walk, or brings them down a wooden ladder backwards and pulls it up again, .... or they fly down and lose off their wings in some place or other and forget it. They were also often said to be found in flour-barrels, and the flour sticks ever so long, you know, or they grow in cabbages, or God puts them in water. ..."
Quotations like these could be multiplied to any length, but those I have given will be enough to show the kind of evidence which psychology will place at the service of folk-lorists, and of the value of that evidence there can hardly be a doubt,
III.—But out of this reciprocal aid grows a third consideration of the good which may be effected if the students of folk-lore, of psychology, and of education, will go together through the world, like the famous six in the märchen. In studying the origin of folk-tales we are very apt to look upon folk-lore as something quite dead and ancient, a relic to be preserved, and not a custom to be maintained. And yet, if we think of it, nothing is more certain than that every folk-story was once alive in the sense that for the people who told it it had a real present meaning, and was told among them, not because it referred to the heavenly bodies, or had been handed down from ancient times, but because it reflected the daily life of the villagers, their ideas of right and wrong, their hopes and fears, the means to ward off harm from their cattle, and to make the crops bear rich fruit.
There are two great collections of folk-tales which have been formed
- ↑ Italics represent the children's own words.
