Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/40

 26 form of a Don Quixote, or perhaps a mediæval knight-errant of olden times who had to solve riddles put by fairies, and had to run many adventures ere he reached his own home? Is the famous epic tale of the Babylonians of the descent of Ishtar to the lower world in quest of Tammiiz aught but an older form of the better-known tale of Eros and Psyche, and also a forerunner, in a way, of Dante? One could go on proving the immortality of spiritual conquests through the whole range of the world's literature, adding proof to proof that that which once existed can never perish.

No less interesting is it, then, to follow downwards the further developments of the discarded literature of the classes. It does not disappear; it only filters down slowly to the masses. It is stripped of the encumbrances of its former existence, and is adapted to more humble and simple surroundings, to more modest homes than those of its former abode, to hamlets instead of grand castles. Yet it finds now a no less ready welcome and a no less hearty reception than of yore. Epical poems and romances are turned into prose and shortened. An episode from a romance becomes a ballad; a popular tune is caught up and fixed to it, and sometimes the old name of the hero is changed into a later one because better known. For instance, Charlemagne will take the place of Pepin, and Sir Bevis or Galahad will become some other knight-errant travelling through the world. In the same manner the ancient grand miniatures and illuminations become in time rude woodcuts. The ancient Romances have thus been turned into Chap-books, which the chapman takes in his sack and carries to the village fair; or they are flattened out still further, and they become broadsides, the original of our illustrated sheets and political cartoons. These quaint, peculiar, popular little books of stories are the last representatives of the romances of old. The substance has been retained, the