Page:The Science of Fairy Tales.djvu/268

These considerations by no means exhaust the case; but I have said enough in support of conclusions anticipated by Grimm's clear-sighted genius and confirmed by every fresh discovery. Let me, therefore, recapitulate the results of the investigations contained in this and the two preceding chapters. We have rapidly examined several types of fairy tales in which the hero, detained in Fairyland, is unconscious of the flight of time. These tales are characteristic of a high rather than a low stage of civilization. Connected with them we have found the story of King Arthur, the Sleeping Hero, "rex quondam, rex que futurus," the expected deliverer, sometimes believed to be hidden beneath the hills, at other times in a far-off land, or from time to time traversing the world with his band of attendants as the Wild Hunt. This is a tradition of a heathen god put down by Christianity, but not destroyed in the hearts and memories of the people—a tradition independent of political influences, but to which oppression is apt to give special and enduring vitality. The corresponding tradition concerning a heathen goddess is discovered in the Enchanted Princess of a thousand sagas, whose peculiar home, if they have one, is in Teutonic and Slavonic countries.