been settled to the satisfaction of many. What has been discovered resolves itself mainly into four different origins of fairy tales:—
I. Fairy tales are detritus of myth, surviving echoes of gods and heroes
Against this theory it may be said that, when popular tales have incidents similar to Greek heroic myths, the tales are not detritus of myth, but both have a more ancient tale as their original source. There was:—
(1) A popular tale which reflected the condition of a rude people, a tale full of the monstrous and the miraculous.
(2) The same tale, a series of incidents and plot, with the monstrous element modified, which survived in the oral traditions of illiterate peasantry.
(3) The same plot and incidents, as they existed in heroic epics of cultivated people. A local and historical character was given by the introduction of known places and native heroes. Tone and manners were refined by literary workmanship, in the Rig Veda, the Persian King-book, the Homeric Epics, etc.
The Grimms noted that the evolution of the tale was from a strongly marked, even ugly, but highly expressive form of its earlier stages, to that which possessed external beauty of mold. The origin is in the fancy of a primitive people, the survival is through Märchen of peasantry, and the transfiguration into
