Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/38

 24 reach the masses only? The way that literature and those customs may have come, by means of travellers, pilgrims, pedlars, minstrels, etc., I have endeavoured to sketch as briefly as possible. But, strictly speaking, these men did not belong to the masses. They represented more or less what may be called the cultured classes of that time. It is quite germane to our investigation to ask, What did the classes read during the Middle Ages, at a time when ignorance was universal, and when the percentage of those who were able to write, read, or to sign their names was so small that, even among the supposed learned friars in convents, it often happened that only a few could write, whilst the rest were content to pray and to beg? What did those classes do? Where did they find satisfaction for that craving, for that spiritual longing for a more or less refined culture? What did they read when no "novels" existed with which as now to beguile their time? The answer is that, instead of reading, they listened to tales, stories, legends, and romances brought from afar. They listened also to the minstrels singing to them of the deeds of old, the exploits of the knights of chivalry, the achievements of the Crusaders, the history of some mythical god or hero. There arose at an early time cycles of romantic legends, notably in England and France, the romances of Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, and of the Quest of the Grail, the story of Sir Bevis of Southampton, Amis and Amile, and remembrances of ancient heroes, such as Alexander the Great, the Siege of Troy, the romances of Charlemagne and his court, and of the great heroes of the Moors and of the Spaniards. Moral stories, tales, and maxims came also from the East, like the famous history of Barlaam and Josaphat, the Hermit and the Prince, with their wondrous apologues, the history of the Cunning of Women, the fox tales, the story of the Seven Wise Masters, and a host of similar stories