Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/43

to the other sphere of society, and if the upper ten should distil poison in their hours of leisure or for the satisfaction of fastidious and unnatural tastes, the masses will follow suit, and with a vengeance. The tinsel will be rubbed off, the gaudy trappings will be stripped, but the poison will remain. But we need not dwell on so gloomy an outlook. Folklore brings us a more hopeful message of confidence and trust in the innate robustness of man. We are born spiritually healthy, and this virility asserts itself over and over again in throwing off the effects of that poison. The process of filtering down is sometimes, nay very often, a purifying process; only that which is best, that which satisfies the imagination and the poetical instincts of the masses, is retained permanently by them, cherished by them, and invested with that incomparable charm so intimately bound up with popular literature. Society is constantly being levelled up. We are marching onwards, because all that is best is retained, is appreciated, and acts to fructify the mind and illumine the soul. Folklore alone teaches us to recognise these gems in often inferior settings and to value the priceless treasures bequeathed to us by the past. Our modern world knows only and cares apparently only for dry-as-dust positive facts, mathematical calculations, and misleading statistics. For fairies and their attendance there is neither sympathy nor kindness. Not very long ago a lady of position went so far as to suggest that fairy-tale books and other stories of imagination should be banished from the nursery and from the school. It would have been a bad day for the young boys and girls of England if such counsels had prevailed. These tales, with their heroes, would have betaken themselves again to the country folk and to the hamlets where they had dwelt for so many years in peace, and where they were highly beloved; but a blow would have been struck at the training of imagination, which is the most glorious