Mr.
Tylor, as I have already mentioned, states, in a sentence which may yet
serve as a motto for a work on the whole question of the origin of the
fairy myth, that "various different facts have given rise to stories of
giants and dwarfs, more than one mythic element perhaps combining to form
a single legend--a result perplexing in the extreme to the mythological
interpreter."[A] And I think it may be granted that Mr. MacRitchie has
gone far to show that one of these mythic elements, one strand in the
twisted cord of fairy mythology, is the half-forgotten memory of skulking
aborigines, or, as Mr. Nutt well puts it, the "distorted recollections of
alien and inimical races." But it is not the only one. It is far from
being my intention to endeavour to deal exhaustively with the difficult
question of the origin of fairy tales. Knowledge and the space permissible
in an introduction such as this would alike fail me in such a task. It
may, however, be permissible to mention a few points which seem to impress
themselves upon one in making a study of the stories with which I have
been dealing.
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