Russian Fairy Tales

make a respectable appearance in polite society. At length there arrived the season of its final change, when, transferred from the dusk of the peasant's hut into the full light of the outer day, and freed from the unbecoming garments by which it had been disfigured, it was recognized as the scion of a family so truly royal that some of its members deduce their origin from the olden gods themselves.

In our days the folk-tale, instead of being left to the careless guardianship of youth and ignorance, is sedulously tended and held in high honor by the ripest of scholars. Their views with regard to its origin may differ widely. But whether it be considered in one of its phases as a distorted "nature-myth," or in another as a demoralized apologue or parable--whether it be regarded at one time as a relic of primeval wisdom, or at another as a blurred transcript of a page of mediæval history--its critics agree in declaring it to be no mere creation of the popular fancy, no chance expression of the unc