The brothers Grimm, profound students of popular lore, used to say that they had never found a single lie in folk-poetry. This sounds strange as we think of the giants and fairies who appear in it, along with historical events given a completely new twist for the sake of artistic attractiveness. Obviously the meaning of the brothers Grimm was somewhat profound. And so, too, is the truth in folk-poetry. For the imagination of folk-poetry is not the promulgation of lies, but the interpretation of facts. The folk-poets meant something as they sang their songs, though they may not have been entirely conscious about it. Why, for instance, is there never a good stepmother in folk-song? There have been good stepmothers, undoubtedly, but the folk-poets knew that it is not in the nature of things that stepmothers will be as good to children as natural mothers. Or why does Jack the Giant Killer not make a pact with the giant when he holds the tyrant finally at his mercy, and live in luxury on a part of the spoils ever afterward? It would be a realistic ending. It would be true to modern politics and correct according to the latest canons of art. But Jack is a popular hero, and a popular hero does not betray the people he fights for. If you want to know some fact in the history of a people don’t go to the official records; they may be tainted by the vanity of the king or by the personal bias of the recorder. But go to the people’s folk-lore. If the fact is there, it is a truth as solid as the mountains. The song may tell you that their good king had thirty-seven horses shot under him in one day, that he fought and killed, single-handed, ten men at arms who surrounded him. It may tell you this, and you will perhaps suspect that the arithmetic is faulty, but you will know that the essential statement--that of the heroism and the popularity of the king--is true. The king’s minstrel might have made a song making a coward and tyrant a hero and a popular leader; but he could not have made people sing it. ‘The ballad-maker only wields his power for as long as he is the true interpreter of the popular will. Laws may be imposed on the unwilling, but not songs.’[7] Written histories may tell you that under such and such a king the people were happy--that the revolution which came afterward was a factitious or fomented one. Go to your folk-song. Bujor the Red-Headed, a Moldavian brigand and a popular hero, was ‘pitiless toward officers of government and toward nobles; he was, on the contrary, most gracious toward peasants and the unfortunate.’ This is historical evidence more reliable than sealed parchment. The government of that land was _not_ good, the nobles were _not_ beneficent. No written history of a people can be considered reliable as long as it conflicts with that people’s folk-lore.