yundertake the work if I believed that the public would make it worth the publisher's outlay and pains. It may be observed with truth that I have not treated this Gospel,nor even the subject of witchcraft, entirely as folk lore, as the wordis strictly defined and carried out; that is, as a mere traditional factor thing to be chiefly regarded as a variant like or unlike sundry othertraditions, or to be tabulated and put away in pigeon holes for reference. That it is useful and sensible to do all this is perfectly true, and it has led to an immense amount of valuable search, collection, andpreservation. But there is this to be said, and I have observed that hereand there a few genial minds are beginning to awake to it, that the mere study of the letter in this way has developed a great indifference to thespirit, going in may cases so far as to produce, like Realism in Art (towhich it is allied), even a contempt for the matter or meaning of it, asoriginally believed in. I was lately much struck by the fact that in a very learned work on Music, the author, in discussing that of ancient times and of the East, while extremely accurate and minute in determining pentatonic and all other scales, and what may be called the mere machinery and history of composition, showed that he was utterly ignorant of the fundamental fact that notes and chords, bars and melodies, were in themselves ideas or thoughts. Thus Confucius is said to have composed a melody which was a personal description of himself. Now if this be not understood,we cannot understand the soul of early music, and the folk-lorist who cannot get beyond the letter and fancies himself 'scientific' is exactlylike the musician who has no idea of how or why melodies were anciently composed. The strange and mystical chapter 'How Diana made the Stars and the Rain' is the same given in my Legends of Florence, but much enlarged, or developed to a cosmogonic-mythologic sketch. A...
