it, born of the years through which it has lived,
fashioned by the minds which have handed it down and embellished it
through the generations, has helped its life. It has become the fairy
tale or the nursery tale. It is told to grown-up people, not as belief
but as what was once believed; it is told to children, not to men; to
lovers of romance, not to worshippers of the unknown; it is told by
mothers and nurses, not by philosophers or priestesses; in the
gathering ground of home life, or in the nursery, not in the hushed
sanctity of a great wonder.[209]

The influence of changing conditions upon the position of mythic
tradition is well illustrated by Dr. Rivers in his account of the
Todas. This people, he says, "are rapidly forgetting their folk-tales
and the legends of their gods [that is, their myths], while their
ceremonial remains to a large extent intact and seems likely to
continue so for some time." Dr. Rivers attributes this to the effect
of intercourse with other people. This intercourse has had no
missionary results and has not therefore affected their religious
rites and ceremonies, but has shown itself largely in the form of loss
of interest in the stories of the past.[210] In other words, and in
accordance with the definitions I am suggesting, the primitive myths
of the Todas have definitely assumed a secondary position as
folk-tale, and not a strong position at that, while religion has clung
to rite and formula.

Primitive myth dislodged in this fashion is sometimes preserved in a
special manner and for religious purposes in its ancient setting as a
belief, or as a tradition belonging to sacred places and appertaining
to sacred things. This is what has happened to the Genesis myth of the
Hebrews; it has also happened to some of the sacred myths of the
Hindus, and perhaps to some of the sacred myths of the Greeks. In this
position the myth may even be reduced to writing, and where this
happens all the sacredness appertaining to tradition is transferred to
the written instrument.

Thus in Arkadia, Pausanias tells us, was a temple of Demeter, and
every second year, when they were celebrating what they called the
greater mysteries, they took out certain writings which bore on the
mysteries, and having read them in the hearing of the initiated, put
them back in their place that same night.[211] In India examples occur
of land being held for telling stories at the Uchaos or festivals of
the goddess Devi.[21