ence he is sure to find something that can be made to serve as such.
As Mr. Tylor observes, no household legend or nursery rhyme is safe from
his hermeneutics. "Should he, for instance, demand as his property
the nursery 'Song of Sixpence,' his claim would be easily
established,--obviously the four-and-twenty blackbirds are the
four-and-twenty hours, and the pie that holds them is the underlying
earth covered with the overarching sky,--how true a touch of nature
it is that when the pie is opened, that is, when day breaks, the birds
begin to sing; the King is the Sun, and his counting out his money is
pouring out the sunshine, the golden shower of Danae; the Queen is
the Moon, and her transparent honey the moonlight; the Maid is the
'rosy-fingered' Dawn, who rises before the Sun, her master, and hangs
out the clouds, his clothes, across the sky; the particular blackbird,
who so tragically ends the tale by snipping off her nose, is the hour of
sunrise." In all this interpretation there is no a priori improbability,
save, perhaps, in its unbroken symmetry and completeness. That
some points, at least, of the story are thus derived from antique
interpretations of physical events, is in harmony with all that we know
concerning nursery rhymes. In short, "the time-honoured rhyme really
wants but one thing to prove it a sun-myth, that one thing being a proof
by some argument more valid than analogy." The character of the argument
which is lacking may be illustrated by a reference to the rhyme about
Jack and Jill, explained some time since in the paper on "The Origins of
Folk Lore." If the argument be thought valid which shows these ill-fated
children to be the spots on the moon, it is because the proof consists,
not in the analogy, which is in this case not especially obvious, but
in the fact that in the Edda, and among ignorant Swedish peasants of our
own day, the story of Jack and Jill is actually given as an explanation
of the moon-spots. To the neglect of this distinction between what is
plausible and what is supported by direct evidence, is due much of the
crude speculation which encumbers the study of myths.

It is when Mr. Tylor merges the study of mythology into the wider
inquiry into the characteristic features of the mode of thinking in
which myths originated, that we can best appreciate the practical
value of that union of speculative boldness and critical sobriety which
everywhere distinguishes him. It is pleasant to