The early myth narrative was of the general character of the märchen primarily in that it was not, as a rule, restricted to a specific time or place. This also differentiates the folk märchen of to-day from the saga. An occasional exception is offered by the anthropogenic legends of peoples of nature, although these also are in other respects of the nature of the märchen. A second essential characteristic of the märchen is the fact that magical agencies play a rôle in the determination of events. This is true even of present-day folk märchen, and is due to the circumstance that the primitive märchen arose in an age which was still entirely under the dominance of magical beliefs. These beliefs, which influenced all phases of the activity of primitive man, also caused the magical märchen to be credited either in their entirety or at least in great part. All the narratives of this age, however, bear the characteristics of the märchen, as these have just been indicated, or, at any rate, it is at most only occasionally, in the primitive legend, that they approximate to the saga. It follows, therefore, that the development of the myth in general begins with the märchen-myth. Here also the development proceeds from below upwards, and not the reverse.
But even though the beginnings of the märchen-myth doubtless date back to primitive man, the flower of the development is undeniably to be found in the totemic age. For it is to this age that all those characteristics point that are still to be found, as survivals of the totemic period, in present-day märchen and children's fairy-tales. Of such characteristics, we might mention primarily the magical causality which the action involves--a point to which we have already referred--and also the rôle assigned to the _animal_, which is portrayed either as the helper and benefactor of man or, at the least, as like him in nature. The latter resemblance appears particularly in the fact that marriages are frequently represented as taking place between man and animals; furthermore, transformations of men into animals are said to occur, and retransformations of the latter into men. In these totemic märchen we very seldom find man to the exclusion of animals; just as little, moreover, do animals appear alone. Both the animal fable and the märchen which deals exclusively with human beings, are products of a later development and belong to a period in which the märchen is no longer credited. Even more truly, however, do these primitive märchen lack the moral lessons which are taught by the stories of later times, particularly by the fable. Nevertheless, those fable märchen which are generally called 'explicative' because they explain the traits of certain animals, still generally bear the marks of the totemic age, even though they apparently belong to one of its somewhat later periods. An example of this is the tale of the American Indians of the North-west, according to which the crow became black through being burned by the sun while stealing celestial fire; or the tale of the Bantus, which explains that the rabbit acquired the cleft in his lip as the result of a blow once dealt him by the man in the moon.