seeing if there are any sufficient number of terraced hills with enclosed chambers that are associated in the popular mind with the fairies, elfs, pixies, "good folk", and the thousand-and-one other names the people give to these enigmatic beings. I have myself collected a list of the local names which are thus associated with fairies, and the near future may perhaps lead to something more tangible about the fairies than might be expected.
VIII. I have left to the last a trait that certainly seems archaic and savage, though I have no theory to account for it. It is the curious "off with their head" method by which Childe Rowland rewards the service of the herds and the hen-wife for telling him his way. Why this should be done on any folk-lore principles I am at a loss to understand.
The story of Childe Rowland would thus be an idealised account of a marriage by capture—another savage trait—by one of the pre-Aryan dwellers, with an Aryan maiden, and her recapture by her brothers, an incident which was probably not uncommon when the two races dwelt side by side, but in a state of permanent hostility. That is the conclusion that some of the above indications would lead us to if we study the tale merely with the view of tracing "survivals".
But there is another way of looking at it, that of the Science of Fairy Tales properly so-called, which deals with tales as tales, and without reference to their archæological references. This has first to do with the origin of the tale in the sense of asking when and where it was first told as a tale. Luckily here our problem is simple. There is nothing exactly parallel to the whole story outside England, so England was its original home.[1] The nearest parallel is the story of the Red Ettin, where we have the
- ↑ The formula "Fee fi fo fum" is essentially English, though analogous ones occur almost everywhere, and can be traced as far back as Æschylus.
