Note 72 — NORG MYTHS. (continued 6)

The stories of our Lord’s life on earth, treated with perfect idealism, sketching His character as He was pleased to manifest it, or His miraculous acts, pervade the popular mythology of all Catholic peoples. I have given one from Spain, by the title of “Where One can Dine, Two can Dine,” in “Patrañas,” of the same character as this Tirolese one; and perhaps it is not amiss to repeat the observation I felt called to make upon it,—that it would be the greatest mistake to imagine that anything like irreverence was intended in such stories. They are the simple utterances of peoples who realized so utterly and so devoutly the facts recorded in the Gospels that the circumstances of time and place ceased to occupy them at all, and who were wont to make the study of our Lord’s example their rule of conduct so habitually, that to imagine Him sharing the accidents of their own daily life came more natural to them than to think of Him in the far-off East. These stories were probably either adapted from the personal traditions which the first evangelists may well be thought to have brought with them unwritten, or invented by themselves, in all good faith, as allegories, by means of which to inculcate by them upon their children the application of His maxims to their own daily acts. They demand, therefore, to be read in this spirit for the sake of the pious intention in which they are conceived, rather than criticised for their rude simplicity or their anachronisms.