Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/35

 Rh custom at the expense of others; and it may well be that such patronage is lent rather to the institutions of the lower orders, who have to be conciliated as future subjects, than to those of the former aristocracy which is once for all dethroned. In such a case there occurs a process which may be named devulgarization. An illustration is to be found in the absorption of primitive cult-elements by Hinduism; accompanied as it was by the expurgation of grosser details, the invention of justificatory myths, and similar applications of patrician varnish. Apart, too, from conditions of culture-contact—in itself a vast subject, since it may take many other forms than the one just considered—the history of religion is full of revivals that force their way up from below: the reason being that religious experience is by no means a monopoly of the ruling classes, though these are usually not slow to exploit, if they dare not suppress, such popular transports. Or, again, good examples of this kind of transvaluation are to be obtained from the study of folktales; which constantly work their way up to the level of polite society, though not without submitting to an obsequious change of garb. Finally, be it remembered that there is an underworld in which all have been reared, namely, the nursery. It may, thanks to a nurse of the old-fashioned type, have direct relations with the other underworld of peasant folklore; but in any case it has an analogous tradition of its own, and one as conservative as any known to man. Here old-time values retain their spell. We shudder at ogres, and wish to dance with the fairies. These values, moreover, grow up with us, and in variously transmuted forms enrich adult life; quickening the sense of wonder, the spirit of adventure, the love of simple and vital things. The function of folklore in education is a subject from which a genius might strike fire.

The second main type of cultural transvaluation is change of meaning, or, as it may be phrased, metalepsis.