know not. But, as Kingsley writes of such a movement of an
ancient tribe, so we may fancy these old Aryans marching
westward--"the tall, bare-limbed men, with stone axes on their
shoulders and horn bows at their backs, with herds of grey
cattle, guarded by huge lop-eared mastiffs, with shaggy white
horses, heavy-horned sheep and silky goats, moving always
westward through the boundless steppes, whither or why we know
not, but that the All-Father had sent them forth. And behind us
[he makes them say] the rosy snow-peaks died into ghastly grey,
lower and lower, as every evening came; and before us the plains
spread infinite, with gleaming salt-lakes, and ever-fresh tribes
of gaudy flowers. Behind us, dark: lines of living beings
streamed down the mountain slopes; around us, dark lines crawled
along the plains--westward, westward ever. Who could stand
against us? We met the wild asses on the steppe, and tamed them,
and made them our slaves. We slew the bison herds, and swam
broad rivers on their skins. The Python snake lay across our
path; the wolves and wild dogs snarled at us out of their
coverts; we slew them and went on. The forests rose in black
tangled barriers, we hewed our way through them and went on.
Strange giant tribes met us, and eagle-visaged hordes, fierce
and foolish; we smote them, hip and thigh, and went on,
west-ward ever." And so, as they went on, straight towards the
west, or as they turned north and south, and thus overspread new
lands, they brought with them their old ways of thought and
forms of belief, and the stories in which these had taken form;
and on these were built up the Gods and Heroes, and all
wonder-working creatures and things, and the poetical fables and
fancies which have come down to us, and which still linger in
our customs and our Fairy Tales bright and sunny and many