Its subject is his slaying of a giant named Goliath.

PSALM CLI.

“I was small among my brethren, and growing up in my father's house I kept my father's sheep.

"My hands made the organ and my fingers shaped the psaltery. And who declared unto my Lord? He, the Lord, he heard all things. He sent his angel and he took me from my father's sheep: he anointed me in mercy with his unction.

"Great and goodly are my brethren, but with them the Lord was not well pleased.

66

I went to meet the stranger and he cursed by all his idols.

"But I smote off his head with his own drawn sword and I blotted out the reproach of Israel."

We have reached a point when something should be said about the sources of our knowledge concerning the early history of the Israelites, for although they were doubtless acquainted with the art of writing while in Egypt, they were in too great a state of turmoil from that time until their settlement as a nation under kingly rule to permit of much thought being given to the shaping of such records.

of the past as had been preserved among the several tribes.

And here, for the clearance of the matter, I would first say a little about the growth of history, taking an old Greek myth for my text.

It says that the goddess of Memory had nine daughters, called the Muses, who were the inspirers and patrons of music, song, and all learning among men, and the temple sacred to whom gave its name to the famous "Museum" at Alexandria, and to like buildings since in which treasures of science and art are gathered. Of these nine sister-goddesses Klio, the eldest, was the Muse of history and epic poetry, which latter treats of real or fabled events. Now this myth holds a great truth, for memory is the mother of history, since all history has its birth in the stored-up recollections of men about things which they have heard or seen or done, and the earliest form which it takes is song. The song itself is both old and young; old as having its birth long before the art of writing was invented, and

young as being the outcome of ages too vast to be reckoned by years, throughout which man, although he knew it not, was making history. Far back as we can trace his presence we find, as I have already explained in the "Childhood of the World," the tools with which he worked, and the weapons with which he fought, and these tell us how wild and savage was his earliest state, but it was not till he began to think, to know that he was, that memory grew strong to do its silent work of hoarding up what eye and ear brought to it, and at last to give forth of its store in song and "saga" (or thing said), as the Norsemen called it. And the earliest of them, like that fine song of triumph on the shores of the Red Sea, or Lamech's remarkable little poem in Genesis iv. 23, 24, told of war and valiant deeds, and sounded the praises of those who wrought them, such a scene of fighting has this poor earth ever been. these were preserved legends of the kind named in the beginning of this book, and thus piecemeal grew the traditions "handed down" (as

With

that word means) from one to another by word of mouth, told round the camp fires, and chanted by the minstrels, until they were fixed in writing. While in floating form they were coloured and altered by the art and fancy of the story-teller, and yielded to the impress of the scenes amidst which they had arisen; but they never lacked the wonderful, for both they who narrated and they who listened had no facts wherewith to check the wild and unlikely tales, nor did doubts ever cross their minds about them. Nature had not yet become the scene of order that fails not; earth, sea, and sky were one vast wonderland, and every nook and cranny the home of myth, and haunted by the goblins and fairies with whom man in his ignorance peopled them. Moreover, as the tradition became older, so old that none could tell whence or how it came, it was revered as the gift of heaven; they of whose deeds it spake loomed large and grand, and were lifted to the dwelling of the gods. And thus the words themselves became sacred words; their care fell in the course of time to a special

class, who committed them to

memory and had great honour paid them as keepers of the treasured history. Wonderful as it may seem to us who have so many books to aid our memories, and have to crowd those memories with so much about so many things, the entire traditions of tribes, the ballads and stories which make up long epics like the Iliad, the Volsungs and other famous poems were preserved, word for word, during hundreds of years by the memory of man. In recent proof of this, the great epic of the Finns called the Kalevala,1 which contains some twenty thousand lines, has within the last forty years been taken down. from the mouths of peasants and fishermen, old women and young folks, by a learned man, who with untiring zeal wandered, year after year, from cabin to cabin through the length and breadth of Finland, and whose labours had

1 It may not be out of place here to say that if the needful leisure can be secured, I hope, in conjunction with the accomplished translator of previous books of mine into Swedish, to make some tales from this beautiful epic known to young folk in England.

G