[Footnote A: Nansen, _ut supra_, p. 262.]
[Footnote B: Dorset, _Omaha Sociology. American Bureau of Ethnology_, iii.
211.]
[Footnote C: Stevenson, _Religious Life of Zuni Child. American Bureau of
Ethnology_, v. 539.]
It is hardly necessary to allude to those spirits which animistic ideas
have attached amongst other objects and places, to trees and wells. They
are fully dealt with in Dr. Tylor's pages, and must not be forgotten in
connection with the present question.
To sum up, then, it appears as if the idea, so widely diffused, of little,
invisible, or only sometimes visible, people, is of the most complex
nature. From the darkness which shrouds it, however, it is possible to
discern some rays of light. That the souls of the departed, and the
underground world which they inhabit, are largely responsible for it, is,
I hope, rendered probable by the facts which I have brought forward. That
animistic ideas have played an important part in the evolution of the idea
of fairy peoples, is not open to doubt.
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