They even invade the legends of the saints. The characters are national heroes, such as Perseus, Jason, Œdipus, and Olympian gods, and holy men and women dear to the Church, and primal heroes of the North, Sigurd and Signy. Their paths and places are not in dim fairyland, but in the fields and on the shores we know—at Roland's Pass in the Pyrenees, on the enchanted Colchian coast, or among the blameless Ethiopians, or in Thessaly or in Argos.
Now, in all these three classes of romance, savage fables, rural märchen, Greek or German epics, the ideas and incidents are analogous, and the very conduct of the plot is sometimes recognisably the same. The moral ideas on which many of the märchen, sagas, or epic myths turn are often identical. Everywhere we find doors or vessels which are not to be opened, regulations for the conduct of husband and wife which are not to be broken; everywhere we find helpful beasts, birds, and fishes; everywhere we find legends proving that one cannot outwit his fate or evade the destiny prophesied for him.
The chief problems raised by these sagas and stories are—(1.) How do they come to resemble each other so closely in all parts of the world? (2.) Were they invented once for all, and transmitted all across the world from some centre? (3.) What was that centre, and what was the period and the process of transmission?
Before examining the solutions of those problems, certain considerations may be advanced.
The supernatural stuff of the stories, the threads of
