much we are behind the Germans, not only as to our insight into the meaning of such relics of the past, but also as to our industry in collecting them. The latter defect is indeed a natural consequence of the former, and it is to be hoped that our local archæologists will no longer be content to labour under either of them when once they have found what far-reaching knowledge may be extracted out of old wives' tales and notions. Only four years ago the editor of "Notes and Queries" spoke hypothetically* of a time to come, when the study of folk-lore (he was, I believe, the inventor of that very expressive and sterling word) should have risen from a pleasant pastime to the rank of a science. Already his anticipation has been realized, and henceforth every careful collector of a novel scrap of folk-lore, or even of a well-marked variety of an old type, may entertain a reasonable hope that he has in some degree subserved the purposes of the ethnologist and the philosophic historian. Subjoined is a list of the principal works referred to in the following pages, with some of the abbre *In the Preface to "Choice Notes." X PREFACE. viations which have been substituted for the full titles : Amélie Bosquet, La Normandie pittoresque et merveilleuse. Brand, Popular Antiquities, with additions by Sir Henry Ellis. Bohn's edition. Choice Notes, from Notes and Queries. Folk-Lore. London, 1859. Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse. Edinburgh. D. M.-Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie. 3te Ausgabe. Göttingen, 1854. Hertz, Der Werwolf. Stuttgart, 1862. Kemble, The Saxons in England. London, 1849. Kuhn, Herab.-Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks. Berlin, 1859. Kuhn, Westf.-Sagen, Gebräuchen und Märchen aus Westfalen. Leipzig, 1859. Kuhn, Zeitschr.-Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung. Kuhn und Schwartz, Ndd.—Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche. Leipzig, 1848. Liebrecht, G. T.- Der Gervasius von Tilbury Otia Imperialia. Hanover, 1856. Mannhardt, Die Götterwelt der Deutschen und Nordischen Völker. Berlin, 1860. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest Kalender aus Böhmen. Prag, 1862. Robert Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland. Edinburgh, 1847. Schwartz, Der Ursprung der Mythologie dargelegt an griechischer und deutscher sage. Berlin, 1860. Wolf, Beiträge zur Deutschen Mythologie. Göttingen. CONTENTS. 37 THE DIVINING OR WISH-ROD CONTINUED-TRADITIONS OF IT IN GREECE AND ROME-FERN-INVISIBILITY-CRAZING 187 212 INTRODUCTORY-COMMON ANCESTRY OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN NATIONS-- IT is indisputable that the principal races of Europe who are known in history, as well as the high caste Hindoos and the ancient Persians, all belong to the same stock; and that the common ancestors of this Aryan or Indo-European race once dwelt together in the regions of the Upper Oxus, now under the dominion of the khan of Bokhara. The evidence upon which this cardinal fact has been established is of like kind with that which com- mands our belief in the ascertained truths of geology, and is in no wise inferior to it in fulness, consistency, and force of inductive detail. It is drawn from the B |