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By Root 2004 0

remained the most popular of the collections of European folk-tales. To the great German pioneers and to the many who followed them in various European countries, all imaginative and studious men, we owe a deep debt of gratitude. They brought us lore that will always be an entertainment for us; they brought us, too, an account of our forefathers’ ways which we should be mindful of. The people who told and who listened to the traditional stories lived under emperors, monarchs, viceroys; they spoke diverse languages; they lived on mountains and in valleys, in forests and dales. But they were at one in their love for certain things—for human good nature, for enterprise, wisdom and devotion, for the genius through which men are drawn to the far-off and the superior—the Golden Tree, the Water of Life, the Matchless Maiden.

We have another past besides the past that history tells us about, a past which is in us, in individuals, more livingly than the recorded past. It is a past in which men slowly arrived at self-consciousness while building up the community, the arts and the laws. Today we have advanced poets and novelists who are trying to find means to suggest the unrecorded past in our memories and in our attitudes and so give their work another dimension. Well, it is this long past, the past that merges with the time when men were comradely with the animals and personalized the powers of nature that comes over to us in these and in other traditional stories. With it certain things are restored to our imagination. Wilhelm Grimm who knew much more about the inwardness of these stories than the philologists and the historians of culture who were to comment on them was aware of “fragments of belief dating back to most ancient times, in which spiritual things are expressed in a figurative manner.” “The mythic element,” he told us, “resembles small pieces of a shattered jewel which are lying strewn on the ground all overgrown with grass and flowers, and can only be discovered by the most far-seeing eye.” “Their signification has long been lost, but it is still felt,” he says, “and imparts value to the story.” It is this felt but hidden value that makes a connection between certain subtle modern works and these old-world fairy tales.

PADRAIC COLUM

* J. M. Synge: The Aran Islands.

THE FAIRY TALES

The Frog-King, or Iron Henry

IN OLDEN times when wishing still helped one, there lived a king whose daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so beautiful that the sun itself, which has seen so much, was astonished whenever it shone in her face. Close by the King’s castle lay a great dark forest, and under an old lime-tree in the forest was a well, and when the day was very warm, the King’s child went out into the forest and sat down by the side of the cool fountain; and when she was bored she took a golden ball, and threw it up on high and caught it; and this ball was her favorite plaything.

Now it so happened that on one occasion the princess’s golden ball did not fall into the little hand which she was holding up for it, but on to the ground beyond, and rolled straight into the water. The King’s daughter followed it with her eyes, but it vanished, and the well was deep, so deep that the bottom could not be seen. At this she began to cry, and cried louder and louder, and could not be comforted. And as she thus lamented, someone said to her: “What ails you, King’s daughter? You weep so that even a stone would show pity.” She looked round to the side from whence the voice came, and saw a frog stretching forth its big, ugly head from the water. “Ah! old water-splasher, is it you?” said she; “I am weeping for my golden ball, which has fallen into the well.”

“Be quiet, and do not weep,” answered the frog, “I can help you, but what will you give me if I bring your plaything up again?”

“Whatever you will have, dear frog,” said she—“my clothes, my pearls and jewels, and even the golden crown which I am wearing.”

The frog answered: “I do not care for your clothes, your pearls and jewels, nor for your golden crown;