subject as well as the
details. Thus, as Robertson-Smith has so well explained, "mythology
was no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred
sanction and no binding force on the worshippers.... Belief in a
certain series of myths was neither obligatory as a part of true
religion, nor was it supposed that by believing a man acquired
religious merit and conciliated the favour of the gods. What was
obligatory or meritorious was the exact performance of certain sacred
acts prescribed by religious tradition. This being so, it follows that
mythology ought not to take the prominent place that is too often
assigned to it in the scientific study of ancient faiths."[207] This
is exactly the position, and all that I have advanced for the purpose
of aiming at a classification of the various kinds of tradition is in
accord with this view.

All that I am anxious to prove, all that it is possible to prove, from
these considerations of the position occupied by myth, is that myths
constitute a part of the serious life of the people. They belong to
the men and women, perhaps some of them to the men only and others to
the women only, but essentially to the life of the people.

I do not think that even Mr. Hartland in his special study of the
subject has quite understood this. He begins at a later period in the
history of tradition, the period of story-telling proper, when myths
have become folk-tales,[208] and he treats this period as the earliest
instead of the secondary stage of myth. In this stage something has
happened to push myth back from the centre of the people's life to a
lesser position--a new religious influence, a new civilisation, a new
home, any one of the many influences, or any combination of
influences, which have affected peoples and sent them along the paths
of evolution and progress.

It is in this way that we come upon the folk-tale. The folk-tale is
secondary to the myth. It is the primitive myth dislodged from its
primitive place. It has become a part of the life of the people,
independently of its primary form and object and in a different
sense. The mythic or historic fact has been obscured, or has been
displaced from the life of the people. But the myth lives on through
the affections of the people for the traditions of their older life.
They love to tell the story which their ancestors revered as myth even
though it has lost its oldest and most impressive significance. The
artistic setting of