Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/39

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Preside n Ha I A d dress . 2 7

from the introduction he wrote for us to Mr. Oliver Elton's translation of Saxo Grammaticus : " Man makes his gods

in his own image Man is a finite animal ; he has a

limited number of types of legend ; these legends, as long as they live and exist, are excessively prehensile ; like the opossum, they can swing from tree to tree without falling ; as one tree dies out of memory they pass on to another. When they are scared away by what is called exact intelli- gence from the tall forest of great personalities, they continue to live humbly clinging to such bare sticks and poles as enable them to find a precarious perch."

32. May we not then conclude that all the good stories were told, and all the good jokes made, while the world was very young ?

E. W. Brabrook.