Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/116

almost every country one may observe a tendency, when some ruler or chief has taken a strong hold of the popular imagination, to tack on to his biography any floating legend that wants a personal centre that story-tellers and readers can clothe with a certain reality. In England the group of legends that gathers round the British hero, King Arthur, affords an illustration of this. Some scholars have assigned a similar origin to the stories of Achilles and Odysseus in the two great poems commonly ascribed to Homer. At a later time many stray legends went to add to the glory of Robin Hood, and in Ireland still unowned achievements of daring and ferocity are commonly assigned to Cromwell. In Eastern countries the sovereign and the royal family are looked on—and still more were looked on—as standing so entirely apart from the common people, that any tale of wonder or horror would almost inevitably be connected with them. They really do so many things exceeding ordinary experience, that listeners of uncritical character, not knowing where to draw the line, would accept without question statements of other things quite incredible or even unnatural.

It must be admitted, too, that these Eastern monarchs and royal families might easily learn in ancient times, as they have in modern times, to think there was something sacred about their