Tom Tit Tot : An Essay On Savage Philosophy In Folk-Tale

Tom Tit Tot : An Essay On Savage Philosophy In Folk-Tale

by Edward Clodd


IN commenting on the prominent example of the conversion of the old epics into allegories which is supplied by Tennyson's Idylls of the King, whereby the legends 'lose their dream reality without gaining the reality of ordinary life,' Mr. Leslie Stephen remarks that 'as soon as the genuine inhabitants of Fairyland can be interpreted as three virtues or three graces, they cease to fascinate' him. With that confession most people will agree. For alike to those who told the story, and to their hearers, these 'inhabitants of Fairyland' were no buckram-clad personifications of Moralities like the characters in the Mystery Plays of four centuries ago.