Glooscap the great chief, and other stories - ElectricCanadian.com

INTRODUCTION
xxi
of man to idealise, to mingle fiction with his
fact, to express his love of the heroic and his
belief in the supernatural. Most curious of all
among these legends are many fairy tales in
which the prince, fairy, and ogre of the conven
tional nursery tale walk hand in hand with be
ings of the forest. These stories have plainly
come to the Indian in recent times, but in their
forest garb they are wonderfully interesting,
and show vividly the genius of the primitive
thought.
Wonderful as these products of savage mind
may seem to one who for the first time discov
ers that primitive life is not all physical, but
is filled with poetry and religion, it seems
stranger still to realize that the rich and va
ried fancies of the Micmacs are but examples
of many such fruits of the mind of man, which
have either wholly or in part disappeared and
have now passed beyond recall. It is sad to
believe that this is so, not only because the loss
of anything rare and beautiful that the im
agination of man has produced must ever be a
cause of regret, but also because there seems
to be in these old tales something that comes
very near to the heart of the child of our own
later day something warm and intimate and
natural which he feels and claims as his
own;
the love of which, we may believe, shows the