t from their neighbours. A writer of the seventeenth century,
in enumerating the causes of upholding "the damnable doctrine of
witchcraft," mentions: "Old wives' fables, who sit talking and chatting
of many false old stories of Witches and Fairies and Robin Goodfellow,
and walking spirits and the dead walking again; all of which lying
fancies people are more naturally inclined to listen after than to the
Scriptures." And if we go further back we find in chapter clv. of the
printed editions of the "Gesta Romanorum" an interesting picture of
domestic life. The whole family is portrayed gathering round the fire in
the winter evenings and beguiling the time by telling stories. Such we
are informed was the custom among the higher classes. It was, indeed,
the custom among all classes, not only in England but on the Continent,
throughout the Middle Ages. The eminent French antiquary, Paul Lacroix,
speaks of wakes, or evening parties, where fairy tales and other
superstitions were propagated, as having a very ancient origin. He
states that they are still (as we have already seen in Brittany and
Gascony) the custom in most of the French provinces, and that they
formed important events in the private lives of the peasants.[4]

It is difficult to sever the occasion and mode of the tale-telling from
the character of the teller; nor would it be wise to do so. And in this
connection it is interesting to pause for a moment on Dr. Pitre's
description of Agatuzza Messia, the old woman from whom he derived so
large a number of the stories in his magnificent collection, and whom he
regarded as a model story-teller. I am tempted to quote his account at
length. "Anything but beautiful," he says, "she has facile speech,
efficacious phrases, an attractive manner of telling, whence you divine
her extraordinary memory and the sallies of her natural wit. Messia
already reckons her seventy years, and is a mother, grandmother, and
great grandmother. As a child, she was told by her grandmother an
infinity of tales which she had learned from her mother, and _she_ in
turn from her grandfather; she had a good memory and never forgot them.
There are women who have heard hundreds of tales and remember none; and
there are others who, though they remember them, have not the grace of
narration. Among her companions of the Borgo, a quarter of Palermo,
Messia enjoyed the reputation of a fine story-teller; and the more one
heard her, the more one desired to he