180 BIRDS AND MAN 



The fairies certainly have a more understandable 

 way of putting it than the geologists and the anthro- 

 pologists when we ask them to tell us how long it is 

 since Paleolithic man listened to the hooting of the 

 wood owl. Has this sound the same meaning for us 

 that it had for him the human being that did not 

 walk erect, and smile, and look on heaven, but went 

 with a stoop, looking on the earth ? No, and Yes. 

 Standing alone under the great trees in the dark still 

 nights, the sound seems to increase the feeling of 

 loneliness, to make the gloom deeper, the silence 

 more profound. Turning our visions inward on such 

 occasions, we are startled with a glimpse of the night- 

 side of nature in the soul : we have with us strange 

 unexpected guests, fantastic beings that are in no way 

 related to our lives ; dead and buried since child- 

 hood, they have miraculously been restored to life. 

 When we are back in the candlelight and firelight, and 

 when the morrow dawns, these children of night and 

 the unsubstantial appearance of things 



fade away 

 Into the light of common day. 



The villagers of Saintbury are, however, still in a 

 somewhat primitive mental condition ; the light of 

 common day does not deliver them from the presence 

 of phantoms, as the following instance will show. 



