e, were transmitted from India to
Boccaccio or La Fontaine.

On the questions to which these two conflicting hypotheses give rise
we will not now dwell. For the present, we will deal with the Russian
folk-tale as we find it, attempting to become acquainted with its
principal characteristics to see in what respects it chiefly differs
from the stories of the same class which are current among ourselves,
or in those foreign lands with which we are more familiar than we are
with Russia, rather than to explore its birthplace or to divine its
original meaning.

We often hear it said, that from the songs and stories of a country we
may learn much about the inner life of its people, inasmuch as popular
utterances of this kind always bear the stamp of the national
character, offer a reflex of the national mind. So far as folk-songs
are concerned, this statement appears to be well founded, but it can
be applied to the folk-tales of Europe only within very narrow limits.
Each country possesses certain stories which have special reference to
its own manners and customs, and by collecting such tales as these,
something approximating to a picture of its national life may be
laboriously pieced together. But the stories of this class are often
nothing more than comparatively modern adaptations of old and foreign
themes; nor are they sufficiently numerous, so far as we can judge
from existing collections, to render by any means complete the
national portrait for which they are expected to supply the materials.
In order to fill up the gaps they leave, it is necessary to bring
together a number of fragments taken from stories which evidently
refer to another clime--fragments which may be looked upon as
excrescences or developments due to the novel influences to which the
foreign slip, or seedling, or even full-grown plant, has been
subjected since its transportation.

The great bulk of the Russian folk-tales, and, indeed, of those of
all the Indo-European nations, is devoted to the adventures of such
fairy princes and princesses, such snakes and giants and demons, as
are quite out of keeping with ordinary men and women--at all events
with the inhabitants of modern Europe since the termination of those
internecine struggles between aboriginals and invaders, which some
commentators see typified in the combats between the heroes of our
popular tales and the whole race of giants, trolls, ogres, snakes,
dragons, and other monsters. The air