The supernatural forms a large element of folk-literature. The traditions and stories that come down to us from the childhood of any race are like the stories that children delight in, tales of the marvelous, of the impossible, of magic and wonder. Folk-literature recks little of realism. It revels in the romantic, the mystic. Tales of gods and demi-gods, of giants and demons, of fairy-folk, of animals endowed with human powers of speech and cunning, of supernatural flora as well as fauna, of ghosts, devils, of saints, and miracles, are the frame-work of such fiction. English literature is especially rich in these collections, for not only are the sections of English-speaking countries themselves fortunate fields for supernatural folk-tales, but the English, being a race of colonizers, have gone far in many lands and from the distant corners of the earth have written down the legends of many tribes and nations. This discussion does not take into consideration primarily folk-tales translated from other languages, but deals only with those appearing in English, though, of course, in many cases, they are transcripts from the spoken dialects of other people. But it is for their appearance as English fiction, not for their value as folk-lore, that they are taken up here. Wherever in fiction the life of the peasant class is definitely treated, there is likely to be found a good deal of folk-lore in the form of superstitions, taboos, racial traditions of the supernatural. This is present to a marked degree in the stories of Sir Walter Scott, and in fact one might write a volume on the supernatural in Scott's work alone. For example, we have Oriental magic and wonder,[181] supernatural vision,[182] superhuman foreknowledge,[183] unearthly "stirs,"[184] the White Lady of Avenel,[185] the bahrgeist,[186] besides his use of diabolism, witchcraft, and so forth already discussed. Thomas Hardy's work, relating as it does almost wholly to rustic life, is rich in superstitions and traditions of the peasants. _The Withered Arm_ gives a gruesome account of a woman's attempt to cure her affliction by touching her arm to the corpse of a man who has been hanged, the complicating horror being furnished by the fact that the youth is her husband's secret son. He gives a story[187] of a supernatural coach that heralds certain events in the family life, charms for securing love as for making refractory butter come when the churn is bewitched, and so forth. Similar elements occur in others of his novels and stories. Eden Phillpotts' fiction[188] shows a large admixture of the folk-supernaturalism of the Dartmoor peasants, as do _Lorna Doone_, _Wuthering Heights_ and numberless other novels and stories of other sections. There are guild superstitions reflected in the work of various writers of the sea, as in W. W. Jacobs' stories, for instance, tales of mining life, and so on. [181] In _The Talisman_. [182] In _My Aunt Margaret's Mirror_.