A Syrup of the Bees - F W Bain

PREFACE THE Young Barbarians, when Romes ecclesiastical polity got hold of them, were persuaded by their anxious foster-mother to sell their Scandinavian birthright of imagination for an unintelligible, theopathic mess of mystic Grzco-Syrian pottage. But the demons, though driven generally from the field, lurked about in holes and corners, watching their opportunity. They took refuge in bypaths, leaving the high road they lay in ambush in a thicket, whence nothing ever could dislodge them that of fairy tales and fables. In India, the demons, i.e. the fairy tales and fables, have never had to hide. But the fairy tales of India differ from the fairy tales of England, much as their fairies do themselves. The fairies of Europe are children, little people and it is to children that fairy stories are addressed. The child is the agent, as well as the appeal. In India it is otherwise the fairy stories are addressed to the grown-up, and the fairies resemble their audience they are grown up too. They form an intermediate, and so to say, irresponsible class of beings, half-way between the mortals and the gods. These last two are very serious things they have their work to do not so the fairies, who exist as it were for the sake of existence- art for arts sake -and have nothing to do but what people who have nothing to do always do do-to get themselves and other people into mischief. These are the peculiar attributes of the fairies of India............