232 SUPERSTITION. [ix. 



metamorpliosis in the minds of men. The conquerors 

 would see their aboriginal slaves of the old race still 

 haunting the tree, making stealthy offerings to- it by 

 night: and they would ask the reason. But they 

 would not be told. The secret would be guarded ; such 

 secrets were guarded, in Greece, in Italy, in medieval 

 France, by the superstitious awe, the cunning, even 

 the hidden self-conceit, of the conquered race. Then 

 the conquerors would wish to imitate their own slaves. 

 They might be in the right. There might be some- 

 thing magical, uncanny, in the hollow tree, which 

 might hurt them ; might be jealous of them as intruders. 

 They, too, would invest the place with sacred awe. If 

 they were gloomy, like the Teutonic conquerors of 

 Europe and the Arabian conquerors of the East, they 

 would invest it with unseen terrors. They would say, 

 like them, a devil lives in the tree. If they were of a 

 sunny temper, like the Hellenes, they would invest it 

 with unseen graces. What a noble tree ! What a fair 

 fountain hard by its roots ! Surely some fair and 

 graceful being must dwell therein, and come out to 

 bathe by night in that clear wave. What meant the 

 fruit, the flowers, the honey, which the slaves left there 

 by night ? Pure food for some pure nymph. The 

 wasp-gods would be forgotten ; probably smoked out 

 as sacrilegious intruders. The lucky seer or poet who 

 struck out the fancy would soon find imitators ; and it 

 would become, after a while, a common and popular 

 superstition that Hamadryads haunted the hollow f orast 

 trees, Naiads the wells, and Oreads the lawns. Some- 

 what thus, I presume, did the more cheerful Hellenic 

 myths displace the darker superstitions of the Pelasgis 

 and those rude Arcadian tribes who offered, even as 



