There is an even closer relationship between the Italian and Celtic fairies. For example, among the Etruscan-Roman people there are now flourishing animistic beliefs almost identical in all details with the Fairy-Faith of the Celts.[123] In a very valuable study on the Neo-Latin Fay, Mr. H. C. Coote writes:--'Who were the Fays--the _fate_ of later Italy, the _fées_ of mediaeval France? For it is perfectly clear that the _fatua_, _fata_, and _fée_ are all one and the same word.' And he proceeds to show that the race of immortal damsels whom the old natives of Italy called _Fatuae_ gave origin to all the family of _fées_ as these appear in Latin countries, and that the Italians recognized in the Greek nymphs their own _Fatuae_.[124] It is quite evident that we have here discovered in Italy, as we discovered in Greece and Roumain lands, fairies very Celtic in character; and should further examination be made of modern European folk-lore yet other similar fairies would be found, such, for example, as the elves of Germany and of Scandinavia, or as the _servans_ of the Swiss peasant. And in all cases, whether the beliefs examined be Celtic or non-Celtic, Aryan or non-Aryan, from Australia, Polynesia, Africa, America, Asia, or Europe, they are in essence animistically the same, as later sections in this chapter will make clear. But while the parallelism of these beliefs is indicated it is, of course, not meant for a moment that in all of the cases or in any one of the cases the specific differences are not considerable. The ground of comparison consists simply in those generic characteristics which these fairy-faiths, as they may be called, invariably display--characteristics which we have good precedent for summing up in the single adjective animistic. SHAPING INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY