forefathers; sometimes scarcely changed, sometimes so altered
that we have to puzzle out the links between the old and the new;
but all these myths and traditions, and Old-world stories, when
we come to know the meaning of them, take us back to the time
when the Aryan races dwelt together in the high lands of Central
Asia, and they all mean the same things--that is, the relation
between the sun and the earth, the succession of night and day,
of winter and summer, of storm and calm, of cloud and tempest,
and golden sunshine and bright blue sky. And this is the source
from which we get our Fairy Stories; for underneath all of them
there are the same fanciful meanings, only changed and altered
in the way of putting them, by the lapse of ages of time, by the
circumstances of different countries, and by the fancy of those
who kept the wonderful tales alive without knowing what they
meant.

When the change happened that brought about all this, we do not
know. It was thousands of years ago that the Aryan people began
their march out of their old country in mid-Asia. But from the
remains of their language and the likeness of their legends to
those amongst other nations, we do know that ages and ages ago
their country grew too small for them, so they were obliged to
move away from it. They could not go eastward, for the great
mountains shut them in; they could not go northward, for the
great desert was too barren for their flocks and herds. So they
turned, some of them southward into India and Persia, and some
of them westward into Europe--at the time, perhaps, when the
land of Europe stretched from the borders of Asia to our own
islands, and when there was no sea between us and what is now
the mainland. How they made their long and toilsome march we