One of his most
intelligent students says: "He founded his elfin world on the prettiest
of the people's traditions, and has clothed it in the ever-living flower
of his own exuberant fancy."
This immense mass of belief, superstition, fancy, is called folk-lore
and is to be found in all parts of the world. These fancies or faiths or
superstitions were often distorted with stories, and side by side with
folk-lore grew up the folk-tales, of which there are so many that a man
might spend his whole life writing them down. They were not made as
modern stories are often made, by men who think out carefully what they
are to say, arrange the different parts so that they go together like
the parts of a house or of a machine, and write them with careful
selection of words so as to make the story vivid and interesting.
The folk-tales were not written out; many of them grew out of single
incidents or little inventions of fancy, and became longer and larger as
they passed from one story-teller to another and were retold generation
after generation.
Men love stories, and for very good reasons, as has been pointed out in
introductions to other volumes in this series; and the more quick and
original the imagination of a race, the more interesting and varied will
be its stories. From the earliest times, long before books were made,
the people of many countries were eagerly listening to the men and women
who could tell thrilling or humorous tales, as in these later days they
read the novels of the writers who know how to tell a story so as to
stir the imagination or hold the attention and make readers forget
themselves and their worries and troubles.
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