ASHIEPATTLE: OR HANS SEEKS HIS LUCK 59 



Odysseus, Grecian Smaakonge, point markedly to the 

 end of such an age in another Aryan stock. The wooers 

 of Clytemnestra or Penelope, if successful, will become 

 lords and kings in the land ; the husband or son has to 

 maintain his ' right ' by the sword. The tragedy 

 springs from the replacement of the old right of the 

 mother -age by a new right, in which the son shall 

 claim through his father. The moral of one civilisation, 

 nay, almost of one generation, is to became the im- 

 moral of the next, and the old immorality the new 

 morality ; therein lies the most fruitful source of human 

 tragedies on both small and large scale. Hamlet and 

 Orestes arose in a transition age, when the custom of 

 inheritance was changing ; in an age when mother-right 

 was becoming father -wrong, and a conflict of duties 

 bred problems for which no established standard pro- 

 vided a moral solution. In a much less impressive, 

 if not less suggestive form, the Mdrchen raise the same 

 problems ; and the Hexen, like the Furies, will be nearly 

 always found fighting the battle of the old civilisation, 

 acting as champions of mother-right. 



In order to illustrate this point, it will not be with- 

 out service to briefly analyse the series of witches to be 

 found in one collection of Mdrchen, Grimm's tales. 



If the view I have suggested be correct, we should 

 expect to find the witch living the life of the old 

 civilisation, that is, dwelling in some hut in a clearing 

 in the forest, depending upon her own growth of 

 vegetables or collection of fruit, surrounded by the 

 smaller domesticated animals, the goat and the goose ; 

 meanwhile she will watch the weather, give advice, 



