Note 1 — IX.—ELVES, FAIRIES, AND BROWNIES.

The part played in the mythology of the Aryan and Semitic races by the Serpent and Dragon would have led one to expect a similar concurrence in the Legendry of China, even if the well-known designation under which its government is so frequently referred to did not at once direct attention to the fact. The land of the “Dragon Throne” is indeed by no means singular in its beliefs in this connection. To say nothing of the Biblical narrative, the Brahminic Krishna, under his two aspects of Krishna serpent-wounded in the heel and Krishna standing triumphant on the head of his arch-enemy, the classic stories of Hercules and the Hydra, Apollo and Python, Cadmus and the Dragon, the Teutonic myth of Sigurd and Fafner, or our own legend of St. George, and others which will be referred to in their proper place, combine to give the serpent and his congeners an universal celebrity. “Among different forms in use as an old symbol (says a recent reviewer) none is more mysterious than the serpent. The animal itself glides out and into holes and corners, and as it glides you only, perhaps, see a coil of the reptile; so, with its symbolism, the facts are most difficult to be got at, and the understanding of them is more difficult still. All nations seem to have had the serpent as a symbol in some form or another. Perhaps one of the strangest forms of this creeping thing was that of the Christian Ophites, who kept a serpent which crawled over the bread of the sacrament on the altar, and this they considered to be the act of consecration.” It is hardly necessary, however, to tell students of Chinese literature or folk-lore that our own assortment of popular legends and beliefs touching the serpent tribe shrink into insignificance beside that of the “Middle Kingdom.” The brazen serpent of Moses has been the lineal progenitor of a succession familiar indeed to the sons of Han.1 Confining our attention in the first instance to serpents proper, let us glance at the vast array of legend which greets the most superficial enquiry into Chinese beliefs on the subject.