Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/16

8 and to continue my figure, it seems to me that it may be represented by an inverted triangle, with its base resting on the primitive life of long past ages, and its apex extending to modern times. The tales here are dependent upon tradition, and never upon literature. The people who know these tales are the peasantry, unlettered and untravelled, and who have lived a life of unchanging routine, surrounded by unchanging custom and belief, the antiquity of which is attested in every way. The tales themselves are loved and treasured of the folk, jealously guarded by them lest they should be captured by the cultured, are known to people whose capacity for tradition takes the place of capacity for literature. They never had "Blue Fairy Tale" books, or "English Fairy Tale" books; they could not have read them, they would not have academically learnt them. A folk-tale of the Veys, a North African people, explains this view most graphically in its opening sentences. The narrator begins his tale by saying: "I speak of the long time past; hear! It is written in our old-time-palaver-books—I do not say then; in old time the Vey people had no books, but the old men told it to their children and they kept it; afterwards it was written" (Journ. Ethnol. Soc., N.S., vi, 354). Yes, afterwards it was written; that is the entire question, and it is answered by this savage folk-lorist.

That this dual division is, therefore, supported by the data of popular tradition in modern times, may now, I think, be granted. It is confirmed by what is known of popular tradition in classical times. The subject is too long to enter upon now, but let any one consider for a moment how such a division helps to explain much of the phenomena of classical myth. No one supposes that the whole of classical myth is contained in Homer, Hesiod Virgil, or Ovid. If they do, let me refer them to Mr. Frazer's admirable paper in on some popular superstitions of the ancients, published during the present year. Scattered up and down the extant