Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/50

xlvi is prepared to sit up with him all night, for his mind is sure to be so distraught with harvest operations that he can tell you nothing. If it is winter time, however, and you fortunately find him unoccupied, nevertheless it requires some management to get him to tell his stories. Half a glass of ishka-baha, a pipe of tobacco, and a story of one's own are the best things to begin with. If, however, you start to take down the story verbatim with pencil and paper, as an unwary collector might do, you destroy all, or your shanachie becomes irritable. He will not wait for you to write down your sentence, and if you call out, "Stop, stop, wait till I get this down," he will forget what he was going to tell you, and you will not get a third of his story, though you may think you have it all. What you must generally do is to sit quietly smoking