never told to children in Athens or Rome before the dawn of Christianity; and a few perhaps have tried to find reasons for the marvellous fact that the Iliad and the Odyssey, the odes of Pindar, and the plays of Eschylus and Sophokles should be made up of materials wholly different from those which have furnished our nursery tales, or even the Saga literature of the Teutonic nations. That these poems and dramas, the works of the highest human genius, should contain any matter such as that which has been moulded into the stories of Cinderella or Blue Beard, or Boots, or Beauty and the Beast, was a thought not to be entertained for a moment. The dignity of the Greek epic or tragic poets would not have stooped to the use of such materials, even if they had known them: but the common impression still is, that they did not know thein. In so thinking and speaking we are no wiser than the learned men who,

of water weighed no heavier w Set to work to explain why a jar

a fish in it than it weighed without the fish. The danger of neglecting or passing over the evidence which would correct these mistaken impressions may be best shown by citing one or two examples as to which it may be safely said that no room is left for reasonable doubt.

Of the popular tales of northern Europe, one of the most familiar is that of the Master Thief. The question is whether this story was known in Germany or Scandinavia, or in any other part of Europe, before the middle ages of our era, or whether it was not. In Professor Max Müller's belief it was first brought from Asia by means of the Arabic translation of the Hitopadesa, known as the Kalila and Dimna. This conclusion, he admits, could not be maintained if the tale were found in Herodotus, in whose time the translations of the Hitopadesa had, of course, not yet reached Europe, and the compilation of the Panchatantra, which furnished the materials of the Hitopadesa, was still a thing of the distant future. If it were so found, we should, he allows, be obliged to include the Master Thief within the most primitive stock of Aryan lore. But speaking of the story of the Brahman and the Goat, told in the Hitopadesa, he adds:

There is nothing in the story of the two sons of the architect who robbed the treasury of Rhampsinitos, which turns on the trick of the Master Thief. There were thieves more or less clever in Egypt as well as in India, and some of their stratagems were possibly the same at all times. But there is a keen and well-defined humor in the story of the Brahman and his deference to public opinion. Of this there is no trace in the anecdote told by Herodotus. That anecdote deals with mere matter of fact, whether imaginary or historical. The story of Rhampsinitos did enter into the popular literature of Europe, but through a different channel. We find it in the Gesta Romanorum, where Octavianus has taken

the place of Rhampsinitos, and we can hardly doubt that it came originally from Herodotus."

So far as this tale is concerned, the question must be set at rest if it can be shown that not merely the adventures, but the title of the Master Thief, were well known in Europe for ages before the Gesta Romanorum came into existence. If this can be shown, there will be no need and no temptation to trace the Norse, Teutonic, and Irish versions of the legend to the Gesta. To do so would be only to multiply difficulties unnecessarily. Of the Hitopadesa story, then, we may note, first, that it says nothing of a regular fraternity of thieves, nothing of a rivalry among them, nothing of the pre-eminence of one who was never known to fail, and therefore, of course, that it does not mention his distinctive title. Of the several versions of the Master Thief, on the other hand, we must remember that not one ascribes the losses of his victims to any deference to public opinion; and thus, without going further, we may be justified in doubting whether the story of the Brahman and the Goat has more than a very distant connection with one or two of the incidents embodied in the story of the Master Thief, while it certainly has nothing to do with its leading idea. The Hitopadesa tale is, indeed, very simple, if not very meagre. It merely tells us of a Brahman who, on being assured by three thieves in succession that the goat which he carried on his back was a dog, cast off the animal, and so left it as a prize for the knaves, who had adopted this mode of cheating him. But it does not say that these three rogues were striving for the mastery among themselves; and if they had been so striving they could not thus have worked in concert.

The gist of this story, Professor Max Müller remarks, is "that a man will believe almost anything, if he is told the same by three different people. But in truth it is not easy to discern any real affinity between the Hitopadesa tale and the European traditious of the Master Thief; and the moral of the latter, if they have any moral at all, seems to be very different. Instead of showing that the seemingly independent testimony of two or three witnesses will pass at once for truth with the credulous, they seem rather to point out that there are some who cannot be taught by experience. The tales themselves give their key-note with singular plainness. When, in the German story, he returns to his father's hovel with all the pomp of wealth, the youth replies to the question how his riches have been gained by saying. I have been a thief; but do not be frightened, I am a Master Thief. Neither locks nor bolts avail against me; whatever I wish for is mine.' He is one in whom the power of thieving is inborn. He needs no teaching, and his first exploits are as mighty and as successful as his last. The increasing difficulty of the lasks imposed upon him excites not the

least feeling of fear or hesitation; and in the craft which invari ably employs the means best fitted to obtain the desired ends there. is no malignity and no spite, but always a genial humor, which delights in the absurdity of the positions in which his victims place themselves. These characteristics mark the three versions of the story, which may be found in Grimm's Household Tales," in Dasent's Tales from the Norse," aud in Campbell's “Popular Tales of the West Highlands." The question is, When did the myth of which we have these three closely allied forms find its way into Europe?

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In the pages of Herodotus we have a singular story, which he ascribes to the reign and the capital of the Egyptian king Bhampsinitos. In this legend the wealth of the king is filched from his treasury by the sons of the architect, who on his death-bed reveals to them the method by which he had retained the power of entering it without the owner's knowledge. Finding his stores dwindling away, the king places a trap within the house. Being caught in this trap, the younger brother prevails on the elder to cut off his head; and Rhampsinitos on entering the chamber is not only astounded at finding a headless body, but terrified by the knowl edge that at least one of his spoilers was still at large. It is at this point of the story that a series of incidents begins, which show the unfailing wit and success of the thief who had no peer. Inviolable custom demanded that the bodies of the dead should be duly mourned; and the king fully counts on speedy discovery, when he orders his guards to impale the body on a wall, and bring before him any one whom they might find mourning for him. Resolved that the body should have the due rites of burial, the mother tells her surviving son that unless he forth with brings it to her she will reveal everything; and the thief, loading some asses with wine-skins, drives them under the wall where the guards are keeping watch, and then, loosening the strings of two or three of them, allows the liquor to escape. Roused by his frantic cries of dis tress and calls for help, the soldiers hasten to the rescue; but they are more intent upon catching the wine in their cups and drinking it than on fastening the skins. At length their entreaties overcome the reluctance of the thief, and receiving more and more wine they drink themselves into insensibility. The thief, of course, takes away the body; and its disappearance more than ever perplexes the king, who now makes use of his daughter to discover the criminal. The effort is vain The thief places in her hand the hand of a dead man, and so escapes from her grasp. The king feels that no other course is now before him than to win his friendship by offering him his daughter, and on the celebration of the marriage he is told by Rhampsinitos that the Egyptians are clev erer than all other men, but that he in his thievery is cleverer than all the Egyptians.

Unless the Egyptian people of the days of Herodotus are to be regarded as a portion of the Aryan race, the presence of this legend in the Nile Valley is a perplexing fact, which can be explained seemingly only on the hypothesis of not infrequent intercourse be tween Egypt and India. The flattering unction to Egyptian vanity with which the story is wound up might easily be brought in by men who were well aware that the myth was not one of Egyptian growth. But it is not less clear that if be not Egyptian, it must be borrowed. There is no doubt a class of myths which are common to all mythical systems alike, whether Aryan or non-Aryan; but these myths all belong to the primary or organic stage of development, and their general characteristics may be easily discov- ? ered. The phenomena of day and night or of the seasons must to a certain extent impress all mankind in the same way. There is, therefore, nothing which is of necessity distinctively Aryan in phrases which speak of the sun as the child of the darkness or of the dawn; of the night as the daughter of the sun or the twilight; of the sun itself as compelled to move in a fixed track, hence as under the doom of ceaseless toil, a bondman or a slave. From all these phrases a large crop of stories might spring up everywhere; but the character and sequence of their incidents would differ completely, except among tribes who had carried away at least the framework of the tales from the common home of their forefathers. This legend of the treasure-house of Rhampsinitos is not one of this class. The leading ideas or the framework of the tale being once given, we can imagine that the ingenuity of later generations might refine on the subtleties of the Master Thief; but we cannot suppose that a series of ideas so singular could suggest themselves to many minds, or even to two minds independently. If it be supposed, as some have been inclined to think, that the old inhab itants of the Nile Valley belonged to the Aryan stock, the difficulty is at once removed; but the substantial identity of the tale with stories found in India, Germany, Norway, and Scotland is beyond doubt. The Indian story, however, is not that of the Brahman and the Goat in the Hitopadesa, but the tale of Karpara and Gata related by Somadeva Bhatta of Cashmir, in his Katha-saritsagara, or Ocean of the Stream of Narrative, a collection made early in the twelfth century, and itself professedly an abridgment of the older collection, known as the Vrihat-Kathâ. Here, as in the Egyptian tale, we have a king, a king's daughter, and a room in which he places his child as well as his treasures; but the thieves are more clumsy. The elder brother enters, not by pushing aside a movable stone, but merely by making a hole through the wall. Staying too long, he is caught in the morning and hanged, having time only to warn his brother to carry away the princess, From this point the legend follows much the same

course with that of Rhampsinitos. The body of Karpara is exposed, and the necessary amount of mourning must be gone through for it. This the surviving brother, Gata, accomplishes by dashing on the ground a karpara, or pot of rice, and exclaiming, Alas for my precious karpara!" words which the guards regard as uttered for the loss of the broken pipkin. The trick of the wine follows, and the body is stolen away; but when the king puts forth a proclamation promising his daughter in marriage to a thief of such consummate skill, the princess bids Gata beware, and they make their escape together from the country. The substantial identity of this tale with the Egyptian tradition cannot be questioned; but the latter assuredly could not be derived from the Vrihat-Katba, which was probably not in existence for perhaps a thousand years after the time of Herodotus, and perhaps no one will maintain that the Egyptian version is the original of the myth as given by Somadeva Bhatta.

The idea that the story in Herodotus furnished the materials fer the Teutonic, Norse, and Celtic versions of the Master Thief would be scarcely less absurd. In these versions the narrative exhibits great changes in detail; but the framework remains the same, and the general spirit of the myth is in no way altered. It is very necessary to note that the thief is described as a singularly slim and slender youth, whose modest and unpretending demeanor would never lead strangers to suspect his astonishing adroitness and power. In cach of these versions the place of the king is taken by a wealthy nobleman, whose daughter in the Norse and Scottish stories becomes the wife of the thief. The German tale alone makes no mention of any daughter, and is, indeed. the most meagre of the three. In it we are told that the thief resolves to face the count in his castle, and is told that he can escape death only if he succeeds in stealing the count's favorite horse from his stable, then in taking away the counterpane from his bed, while he and his wife are asleep, and lastly in stealing the parson and clerk out of the church. The first of these tasks is performed by precisely the same means which the thief employs in the Hindu and Egyptian stories. The guards are stupefied with drugged wine, and the thief rides up to the castle on the stolen horse. The second he accomplishes by means of a corpse which he pushes up to the window of the room in which the count slept. The latter, hearing the noise, points a pistol at the figure and fires; and the thief immediately lets the body fall to the ground. When the count comes down to bury the dead man, the thief hastens to the chamber and blains the bed-covering from the countess on the plea of needing a shroud, and the ring on the plea that it was only fair to bury with him that for which he had perilled his life. Although this incident is not found in the Herodoteau story, it may