Story-telling is one of the most ancient and universal of arts. Concerning this art Thackeray has said:--
Stories exist everywhere: there is no calculating the distance through which stories have come to us, the number of languages through which they have been filtered, or the centuries during which they have been told. Many of them have been narrated almost in their present shape for thousands of years to the little copper-colored Sanskrit children, listening to their mothers under the palm-trees by the banks of the yellow Jumna--their Brahmin mother, who softly narrated them through the ring in her nose. The very same tale has been heard by the northern Vikings as they lay on their shields on deck; and the Arabs couched under the stars on the Syrian plains when their flocks were gathered in, and their mares were picketed by the tents.
In his _Roundabout Papers_, Thackeray gives a picture of a score of white-bearded, white-robed warriors or grave seniors of the city, seated at the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout, listening to the story-teller reciting his marvels out of _Arabian Nights_. "A Reading from Homer," by Alma Tadema, is a well-known picture which portrays the Greeks listening to the _Tales of Homer_. In the _Lysistrata_ of Aristophanes, the chorus of old men begins with, "I will tell ye a story!" Plutarch, in his _Theseus_ says, "All kinds of stories were told at the festival Oschophoria, as the mothers related such things to their children before their departure, to give them courage." In his _Symposium_ he mentions a child's story containing the proverb, "No man can make a gown for the moon."--
The Moon begged her Mother to weave her a little frock which would fit her.
The Mother said, "How can I make it fit thee, when thou art sometimes a Full Moon, and then a Half Moon, and then a New Moon?"--
In the works of the German, Schuppius (1677), appeared this:--
Your old folks can remember how, in the olden times, it was customary at vespers on Easter day, to tell some Easter tidings from the pulpit. These were foolish fables and stories such as are told to children in the spinning-room. They were intended to make people merry.
In England, _Chaucer's Tales_ reflect the common custom of the times for the pilgrim, the traveler, the lawyer, the doctor, the monk, and the nun, to relate a tale. _The Wife of Bathes Tale_ is evidently a fairy tale. In Peele's _Old Wives' Tale_ we learn how the smith's goodwife related some nursery tales of Old England to the two travelers her husband brought to the cottage for the night. In Akenside's _Pleasures of Imagination_ we find:--