tales alive without knowing what they
meant.

Thousands of years ago, the Aryan people began their march out of their
old country in mid-Asia. From the remains of their language, and the
likeness of their legends to those among other nations, we know that
ages and ages ago their country grew too small for them, so they were
obliged to move away from it. Some of them turned southward into India
and Persia, and some of them went westward into Europe--the time,
perhaps, when the land of Europe stretched from the borders of Asia to
the islands of Great Britain, and when there was no sea between them and
the main land. How they made their long and toilsome march we know not.
But, as Kingsley writes of such a movement of an ancient tribe, so we
may fancy these old Aryans marching westward--"the tall, bare-limbed
men, with stone axes on their shoulders and horn bows at their backs,
with herds of gray cattle, guarded by huge lap-eared mastiffs, with
shaggy white horses, heavy-horned sheep, and silky goats, moving always
westward through the boundless steppes, whither or why we know not, but
that the Al-Father had sent them forth. And behind us (he makes them
say) the rosy snow-peaks died into ghastly gray, lower and lower, as
every evening came; and before us the plains spread infinite, with
gleaming salt-lakes, and ever fresh tribes of gaudy flowers. Behind us,
dark lines of living beings streamed down the mountain slopes; around
us, dark lines crawled along the plains--all westward, westward ever.
Who could stand against us? We met the wild asses on the steppe, and
tamed them, and made them our slaves. We slew the bison herds, and swam
broad rivers on their skins. The python snake lay across our path; the
wolves and wild dogs snarled at us out of their coverts; we slew them
and went on. Strange giant tribes met us, and eagle visaged hordes,
fierce and foolish; we smote them, hip and thigh, and went on, westward
ever."[556:1] And so they went on, straight toward the West, or, as they
turned North and South, and thus overspread new lands, _they brought
with them their old ways of thought and forms of belief_, and the
stories in which these had taken form; _and on these were built up the
gods and heroes_, and all wonder-working creatures and things, and the
poetical fables and fancies which have come down to us, and which still
linger in our customs and our fairy tales; bright and sunny and
many-colored in the warm regions of th