out and had shaken the skin off me, I said to the brute, 'I am out now, in spite of thee!'" It was a blind fiddler, in Islay, who told the story of Conall, as it had been handed down by tradition from generation to generation; just as thousands of years before the story of Odysseus and Polyphemos was told by Greek bards to wondering villagers. Here we must stop; for volumes would not contain all that might be said of the likeness of legend to legend in all the branches of the Aryan family, or of the meaning of these stories, and of the lessons they teach--lessons of history, and religious belief, and customs, and morals and ways of thought, and poetic fancies, and of well-nigh all things, heavenly and human--stretching back to the very spring and cradle of our race, older than the oldest writings, and yet so ever fresh and new that while great scholars ponder over them for their deep meaning, little children in the nursery or by the fire-side in winter listen to them with delight for their wonder and their beauty. Else, if there were time and space we might tell the story of Jason, and show how it springs from the changes of day and night, and how the hero, in his good ship Argo, our mother Earth, searches for and bears away in triumph the Golden Fleece, the beams of the radiant sun. Or we might fly with Perseus on his weary, endless journey--the light pursuing and scattering the darkness; the glittering hero, borne by the mystic sandals of Hermes, bearing the sword of the sunlight, piercing the twilight or gloaming in the land of the mystic Graiae; slaying Medusa, the solemn star-lit night; destroying the dark dragon, and setting free Andromeda the dawn-maiden; and doing many wonders more. Or in Hermes we might trace out the Master Thief of Teutonic, and Scandinavian, and Hindu legends; or in Herakles, the type of the heroes who are god-like in their strength, yet who do the bidding of others, and who suffer toil and wrong, and die glorious deaths, and leave great names for men to wonder at: heroes such as Odysseus, and Theseus, and Phoebus, and Achilles, and Sigurd, and Arthur, and all of whom represent, in one form or another, the great mystery of Nature, and the conflict of light and darkness; and so, if we look to their deeper meaning, the constant triumph of good over evil, and of right over wrong. CHAPTER III.--DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: STORIES FROM THE EAST.