apart from
several valuable bibliographies had, alone and in collaboration, made
important contributions to his native literature. He died at
Reykjavik in 1888.

His principal literary work, and that by which alone he is known outside
of Iceland, is the collection of folk-tales that appeared in Iceland in
1862-64, in two volumes, with the title 'Islenzkar Thoosoegur og
AEfintyri' (Icelandic Popular Legends and Tales). A small preliminary
collection, called 'Islenzk AEfintyri' (Icelandic Tales), made in
collaboration with Magnus Grimsson, had been published in 1852.
Subsequently, Jon Arnason went to work single-handed to make an
exhaustive collection of the folk-tales of the country, which by
traveling and correspondence he drew from every nook and corner of
Iceland. No effort was spared to make the collection complete, and many
years were spent in this undertaking. The results were in every way
valuable. No more important collection of folk-tales exists in the
literature of any nation, and the work has become both a classic at home
and a most suggestive link in the comparative study of folk-lore
elsewhere. Arnason thus performed for his native land what the Grimms
did for Germany, and what Asbjoernsen and Moe did for Norway. He has
frequently been called the "Grimm of Iceland." The stories of the
collection have since found their way all over the world, many of them
having been translated into English, German, French, and Danish.

In his transcription of the tales, Arnason has followed, even more
conscientiously, the plan of the Grimms in adhering to the local or
individual form in which the story had come to him in writing or by
oral transmission. We get in this way a perfect picture of the national
spirit, and a better knowledge of life and environment in Iceland than
from any other source. In these stories there is much to say of elves
and trolls, of ghosts and "fetches," of outlaws and the devil. Magic
plays an important part, and there is the usual lore of beasts and
plants. Many of them are but variants of folk-tales that belong to the
race. Others, however, are as plainly local evolutions, which in their
whole conception are as weird and mysterious as the environment that has
produced them.

All the stories are from 'Icelandic Legends': Translation of Powell
and Magnusson.

THE MERMAN

Long ago a farmer lived at Vogar, who was a mighty fisherman; and of all
the farms about, not one was so well situa