same legend occurs among the Bechuanas, and is published by Casalis. Yet another incident springs from the taboo on certain actions between husband and wife, producing the story of Cupid and Psyche (see Lang's Custom and Myth, 1884, p. 64). Once more, the custom which makes the youngest child the heir is illustrated in the märchen of the success, despite the jealousy of the elders, of Cinderella, of the Zulu prince (Callaway's Tales from the Amazulu, pp. 64, 6 5), and in countless other marchen. In other cases, as in the world-wide märchen corresponding to the Jason epic, we seem in presence of an early omantic invention, -how diffused it is difficult to imagine. Moral lessons, again, are inculcated by the numerous tales which turn on the duty of kindness, or on the impossibility of evading fate as announced in prophecy. In opposition to the philological explanation of the story of Oedipus as a nature myth, this theory of a collection of incidents illustrative of moral lessons is admirably set forth in Prof. Comparetti's Edipo e la Mitologia Comparata (Pisa, 1867).
On a general view, then, the stuff of popular tales is a certain number of incidents and a certain set of combinations of these incidents. Their strange and irrational character is due to their remote origin in the fancy of men in the savage condition; and their wide distribution is caused, partly perhaps by oral transmission from people to people, but more by the tendency of the early imagination to run everywhere in the same grooves. The narratives, in the ages of heroic poetry, are elevated into epic song, and in the middle ages they were even embodied in legends of the saints. This view is maintained at greater length, and with numerous illustrations, in the introduction to Mrs Hunt's translation of Grimm's Kinder- und Haus-Märchen, and in Custom and Myth, already referred to.
For savage popular tales see Theal's Kaffir Folk Lore (2nd ed., London, 1886); Callaway's Nursery Tales of the Amazulu (London, 1868); Schoolcraft's Algid Researches; Gill's Myths and Tales of the South Pacific; Petitot's Traditions Indiennes (1886); Shortland's Maori Religion and Mythology (London, 1882); the South African Folk Lore Record; the Folk Lore Record (London, 1879–85, Malagasy stories); Rink's Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo; Bleek's Hottentot Tales and Fables (London, 1864); Castrén's Samoyedische Märchen; Maspero's Contes Egyptians (from ancient Egyptian MSS.); and Leland's Algonquin Legends (London, 1884). For European tales, the bibliography in the translation of Grimm already referred to may be used, and the Maisonneuve collection, Les Littératures populaires, may be recommended. The names of Liebrecht, Köhler, Dasent, Ralston, Nigra, Pitré, Cosquin, Afanasief, Gaidoz, Sébillot, may serve as clues through the enchanted forest of the nursery tales of Europe. Miss Coxe's Cinderella (Folk-Lore Society) is an excellent work on the subject, as is Sidney Hartland's Legend of Perseus, mainly concerned with myths of miraculous births. For Australia see Mrs Langloh Parker's Australian Legendary Tales (2 vols.) and Howitt's Native Tribes of South-East Australia. M. Sébillot has edited French tales, and Mr Dennett has given Folk-Lore of the Fiort. There are abundant materials and discussions in Frazer's The Golden Bough. (A. L.)
TALENT (Lat. talentum, adaptation of Gr. τάλαντον, balance,
weight, from root ταλ-, to lift, as τλῆναι, to bear, τάλας,
enduring, cf. Lat. tollere, to lift, Skt. tulā, balance), the name
of an ancient Greek unit of weight, the heaviest in use both for
monetary purposes and for commodities (see Weights and Measures). The weight itself was originally Babylonian, and derivatives were in use in Palestine, Syria and Egypt. In medieval Latin and also in many Romanic languages the word was used figuratively, of will, inclination or desire, derived from the sense of balance, but the general figurative use for natural endowments or gifts, faculty, capacity or ability, is due to the parable of the talents in Matt. xxv.
TALFOURD, SIR THOMAS NOON (1795-1854), English
judge and author, the son of a brewer in good circumstances,
was born on the 26th of May 1795 at Reading (not, as is some-
times stated, at Doxey, near Stafford). He received his early
education at> Hendon, and at the Reading grammar-school. At the age of eighteen he was sent to London to study law under Joseph Chitty, the special pleader. Early in 1821 he joined the Oxford circuit, having been called to the bar at the middle Temple in the same year. When, fourteen years later, he was created a serjeant-at-law, and when again he in 1849 succeeded Mr. Justice Coltman as judge of the court of common pleas, he attained these distinctions more perhaps for his laborious care in the conduct of cases than on account of any forensic brilliance. At the general election in 1835 he was returned for Reading. This seat he retained for close upon six years, and he was again returned in 1847. In the House of Commons he introduced an International Copyright Bill; his speech on this subject was considered the most telling made in the House during that session. The bill met with strong opposition, but Talfourd had the satisfaction of seeing it pass into law in 1842, albeit in a greatly modified form. Dickens dedicated the Pickwick Papers to him.
In his early years in London Talfourd was dependent—in great measure, at least — upon his literary exertions. He was at this period on the staff of the London Magazine, and was an occasional contributor to the Edinburgh and Quarterly reviews, the New Monthly Magazine, and other periodicals; while, on joining the Oxford circuit, he acted as law reporter to The Times. His legal writings on matters germane to literature are excellent expositions, animated by a lucid and telling, if not highly polished, style. Among the best of these are his article "On the Principle of Advocacy in the Practice of the Bar " (in the Law Magazine, January 1846); his Proposed New Law of Copyright of the Highest Importance to Authors (1838); Three Speeches delivered in the House of Commons in Favour of an Extension of Copyright (1840); and his famous Speech for the Defendant in the Prosecution, the Queen v. Moxon, for the Publication of Shelley's Poetical Works (1841).
But Talfourd cannot be said to have gained any position among men of letters until the production of his tragedy Ion, which was privately printed in 1835, and produced in the follow- ing year at Covent Garden theatre. The tragedy was also well received in America, and was reproduced at Sadler's Wells in December 1861. This dramatic poem, its author's masterpiece, turns upon the voluntary sacrifice of Ion, king of Argos, in response to the Delphic oracle, which had declared that only with the extinction of the reigning family could the prevailing pestilence incurred by the deeds of that family be removed.
Two years later, at the Haymarket theatre, The Athenian Captive was acted with moderate success. In 1839 Glencoe, or the Fate of the Macdonalds, was privately printed, and in 1840 it was produced at the Haymarket; but this home drama is inferior to his two classic plays. The Castilian (1853) did not excite a tenth part of the interest called forth by Ion. Before this he had produced various other prose writings, among them his "History of Greek Literature," in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana. Talfourd died in court during the performance of his judicial duties, at Stafford, on the 13th of March 1854.
In addition to the writings above-mentioned, Talfourd was the author of The Letters of Charles Lamb, with a Sketch of his Life (1837); Recollections of a First Visit to the Alps (1841); Vacation Rambles and Thoughts, comprising recollections of three Continental tours in the vacations of 1841, 1842, and 1843 (2 vols., 1844); and Final Memorials of Charles Lamb (1849-50).
TALGARTH, a decayed market town in Breconshire, South Wales, situated on the Ennig near its junction with the Llynfi (a tributary of the Wye), with a station on the joint line of the Cambrian and Midland companies from Brecon to Three Cocks junction (2½ m. N.N.E., but in Talgarth parish). The population of the whole parish (which measures 12,294 acres) was 1466 in 1901. The church of St Gwendoline, restored in 1873, is in Perpendicular style, with an embattled tower restored in 1898. The Baptists, Congregationalists and Calvinistic Methodists have each a chapel in the town, and there is also a Congregational church at Tredwestan, founded in 1662. About 1 m. S.W. is Trevecca, where Howel Harris, one of the founders of Welsh Methodism, was born in 1713, and where in 1752 he established a communistic religious “family” of about a hundred persons; their representatives in 1842 handed over the property to the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Connexion, who in that year opened there a theological college, and in 1874 added to it a
Harris memorial chapel. In 1906 the college was removed
