The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-11-03

he little people who lived under ground and fashioned the metal for the good of mankind Now these trolls, were sometimes caught mapping, and l am rot sure but that the spirit of human coquetry was so strongly developed in the females that they sometimes pur- posely permitted themselves to be thus entrapped and so gained a human hus- band.
 Like mortaIs they divested them- selves of their garments when bathing. and like the swan maidens, they could not return to their own realm with cut those garments. In some way the lren among mortals became aware of 1is fact and often they would lie in wait and steal the trolls garments VI hile the owner was in the water. The troll then usually became his wife and remained his wife so long as her clothes were kept under lock and key or in some manner secreted from her, with enc exception and that exception was that her husband was never to touch her with iron or any metal. It was supposed that the impact of iron engen- dered nostalgia (home sickness). and as soon as the troll felt the metal she Immediately vanished, to the great srief of her husband, for they are re- puted as having made most excellent wives. With swan n-maidens who were ensnared as wives the exception had variant in the fact that the husband was not to exact her name. Readers of Lohengrene will recall that the story hinges upon this fact, and the question: ing as to his identity was the fatal finale of that charming story.
 But there Is significance in the prohibition of the impact of metal and the great pity is that we are ignorant o1 the mystery.
 A certain school of critics. with whom I agree, contend and have con tended for centuries that every legend, 10 matter how fanciful its garnish- irent. Is predicated upon fact. Nov ing along these lines a Greek author, Whose name I at this instant fail to recall, wrote a romance In which he maintained that he visited a foreign country and there found great tablets of brass containing the engraved rec ords of human heroes embodying the germ of every romance and legend and thus proving that all the gods and demi-gods were real men and their deeds had been twisted and distorted into the legends then current.
 There is more truth than fancy In this idea. That arrow which a demi- god possessed and which guided him through the trackless forests of old was nothing more nor less than cruue mariners needle and the forerunner of the compass of our day.
 Max Muller, that great Sanscrit schol- ar, has no greater admirer than my self. and while I have followed him implicitly in most of his deductions l must draw the line when he professes to see the symbolical in many of his Buddhist legends. He contends that much of the Indian mythology repre- sents only the dawn of the crepuscule that precedes the dawn. In my humble opinion he goes too far. and once read a most remarkable story ridiculing rot only Max Muller in this respect, but all other authors who denied the pre- diction of a legend upon a fact and rushed to the symbolical as key to their dilemma.
 r regret that I have not this story at hand. and that I am compelled to repeat it from memory thus missing many of its most salient details.
 In mock earnestness the author con- tended that Napoleon the great never existed, but that the remarkable story