[439] Keary, _Origin of Primitive Belief_, 464-5. Mr. MacCulloch, _Childhood of Fiction_, devotes a chapter to the clever-youngest-son group of tales (cap. xiii.), which should be consulted. [440] _Folklore_, ii. 194. [441] Sir A. Lyall, _Asiatic Studies_, 184, and compare pp. 198, 208, 211. [442] _Cf._ Granger, _Worship of the Romans_, 211. Mr. Granger uses terms which I do not quite accept, though his suggestion is entirely good in principle. [443] _Report of British Association_ (Liverpool Meeting). CHAPTER VI EUROPEAN CONDITIONS There are obviously conditions attaching to European culture history which do not apply elsewhere, and as obviously the most important, perhaps the only important one, which it is necessary to consider in connection with the problems of folklore is that resulting from the introduction of a non-European religion and the adoption of this religion as part of the state machinery in the several countries. This religion is, of course, Christianity. It came into the home of a decaying, corrupt, and impossible state religion wherever the Roman Empire was established and into the homes of purer and sterner faiths, faiths that had belonged to the people through all the years of conquest and settlement, migration and resettlement, wherever the empire of Rome had not become established. Until the advent of Christianity into Britain the Celtic peoples possessed their own customs, their own religious beliefs, their own usages. Until the Anglo-Saxons came into contact with Christianity in their new settlements in England, they also possessed their own customs, usages, and beliefs. So far as Celt and Teuton were responsible for continuing or allowing to continue the still older faiths, the faiths of savagery as we have accustomed ourselves to term them, they brought these faiths also into contact with Christianity, and Christianity dealt with the problem thus presented exactly as it dealt with the Celtic and Teutonic faiths, namely, by treating all alike as pagan, all equally to be set aside or used in any fashion that circumstances might demand. Let it be particularly noted that Christianity did not distinguish between the various shades of paganism. All that was not Christian was pagan. Christianity was both antagonistic to and tolerant of pagan custom and belief. In principle and purpose it was antagonistic. In practice it was tolerant where it could tolerate safely. At the centre it aimed at purity of Christian doctrine, locally it permitted pagan practices to be continued under Christian auspices. In the earliest days it set itself against all forms of idolatry and non-Christian practices; in later days, after the fifth century, says Gibbon,[444] it accepted both pagan practice and pagan ritual.