Fables

FABLES.

I am told on good authority, that stories in which beasts play a chief part are perhaps the most interesting of all in a scientific point of view. I accordingly give a few here, which should belong to No. XVII. in Vol. I. They will serve as a contrast to the heroic traditions with which I had intended to fill this third volume. Their value consists in their close resemblance to well-known stories, found elsewhere amongst peasants, and published in modern times, and in their possessing traits of their own, which seem to indicate that they are parallel traditions derived from a common source; not stories derived from others, and following in their wake.

For example, the whole of the incidents in the story of the Fox and the Wolf are to be found in Grimm; but they are separated. Some of the incidents are also in the Norse tales; but the Gaelic tale fits Highland ways of life exactly, and the story is so

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widely spread in the Highlands, and can be traced so far back, that it seems almost impossible that the unlettered men who tell it to their children should have got it from modern books which they could neither read nor understand.