"Father, father!" cried Pedro with a prolonged voice, but nobody answered. The dog growled; the horse pounded the ground with his feet; the hog snorted, while a greater amount of charcoal than before poured out of its mouth; the black cloth waved, producing a sound like the groaning of a sick man. Pedro grabbed his brother by the waist so tightly that Mariano could hardly breathe. Then Mariano remembered that he had in his pocket the remainder of a candle which a sexton had given him at the procession. He quickly lighted it. Instantly the ghosts disappeared. Mariano and Pedro reached home, but alas! they could neither eat nor sleep, for it seemed to them as if the ghosts were still around them. --Eusebio Ramos. IV. The Nursery Saga or Märchen [Origin] The ethnologists are not agreed concerning the history of nursery sagas, or _märchen_, as they call them. Whether such stories as "Jack-the-Giant-Killer" are reduced and modified forms of once greater sagas or whether they are immature stories arrested in their growth toward sagas, the scientists are still discussing. But happily for the narrator, as we noticed before, the question of origin is not of prime importance. He need consider it only so far as it helps to reveal the distinctions of the type. As the generic title indicates, nursery sagas are tales told to children after lessons are done. Nobody wants instruction; nobody wants facts. "Once upon a time in a certain village" is definite enough. What the listener desires is action, things a-doing, Jack to kill the giant, Cinderella to marry the prince, Tom Thumb to get safely home. The end is always happy, no matter how many troubles the hero or heroine encounters during the course of the narrative. The brothers Grimm expressed their realization that such an end is essential to a _märchen_. Their devoted scientific collecting and their charmingly sympathetic retelling have given back not only to Germany but also to the whole world much of its otherwise lost pleasure. [English nursery sagas] Good native nursery sagas are scarce in English. Many of our best known, like Cinderella, are importations. "Jack-the-Giant-Killer" and "Jack and the Bean-Stalk" and "Rumpelstiltskin"--or "Tom Tit Tot," as the older version has it--are recorded, however, as of English origin. They have been handed down verbally and in chapbooks and various other written forms for hundreds of years. [Distinguishing elements--the kind of hero]