Matheson Collection > Popular tales of the west Highlands > Volume 4

278 MYTHOLOGY.
of the brain. The horses of Straparola are very
material, and walk the earth ; those of old John
MacPhie are closely related to Pegasus and the horses
of the Veda, and fly and soar through grimy peat reek
to the clouds.
Fortunio used his magic power to become a bird,
and fly to the chamber of a princess, who provided him
with arms and armour ; but the son of the fisherman
won his fortune and his princess by hard blows, and
by doing his duty faithfully. If it were possible that
the rough Highlander had got knowledge of the work
of the polished Italian, it is certain that he did not
cpy its morals. And what is true of the Italian and
Gaelic versions is equally true of all others which I
know. Shortshanks in Norse, Fortunio in French
(Contes des Fees, vol. v., p. 49), the nix of the mill-
pond, the ball of crystal in German, and any other
versions, if examined, will be found to consist of a bare
tree of branching incidents common to all, and so
elaborate that no minds could possibly have invented
the whole seven or eight times over, without some
common model, and yet no one of these is the model,
for the tree is defective in all, and its foliage has some-
thing peculiar to each country in which it grows. They
are specimens of the same plant, but their common
stock is nowhere to be found.
Mythology — Aryan Theory.
I lately had the advantage of hearing the modern
science of language explained by a master of that art.
Its principles, as I gathered them, appear to be these.
Men are different from brutes in that they are gifted
with reason, and having reason they are also gifted with