Our nursery legends and popular superstitions are fast becoming matters
of history, except in the more remote and secluded portions of the
country. But now that the light of modern investigation, and especially
that ray furnished by recent discoveries in philological science, has
been directed towards their deeper and more hidden mysteries, profound
philosophical historians have begun to discover that from this
apparently desolate literary region much reliable knowledge may be
extracted, leading to conclusions of the most interesting and important
kind, with reference to the early history of our race.