Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/324

 3o6 Correspondence.

them had gained their confidence and respect. He collected a number of curious Beast Tales, and soon after unearthed a quaint old blind man, Akbar Shah Manjhi, who used to support himself by going about to marriage and other feasts and amusing the people by his tales. This old man came readily to my camp, and was quite pleased to stay there indefinitely so long as the camp suttler had an order to provide him with food. He would sit at my tent-door at night and reel off tales ad libitum. The difficulty of understanding his curious patois was successfully overcome, and a large number of tales was taken down in the usual way and translated as opportunity occurred.

If I were asked : " What are the essential qualifications for the work of a collector of folklore ? " I would say that, to begin with, you must know more than a little of the people and their ways, you must speak the usually crabbed patois with reasonable facility, you must not show over-anxiety in the quest of information, you must not ask too many questions, you must not carry on the inquiry too long, becauses the rustic easily gets tired, loses the power of attention, and his memory fails if the session be pro- tracted. You must have infinite patience, and the power of listen- ing to a heap of rubbish before you find anything worth recording. It is better to put down, or pretend to put down, all or most of what you are told if the people are found to be communicative, and leave the task of selection to be done at another time.

As to whether the people are intentionally deceiving you or not. — The villager where his immediate interests are involved is a master-liar, and will do his best to mislead you. But this is not so much the case, I am inclined to beHeve, where his immediate interests are not involved, and when no special eagerness for infor- mation tends to make him suspicious. I doubt whether there is any real test to prove whether he is lying or not. People will tell that a rustic always twitches his toes when he is lying. But this is hardly a universal habit. His general demeanour when under examination will usually be significant to one who knows him well, and who is gifted with the not very common power of minute ob- servation. But it is always safe to assume that he will try to mislead you if he thinks he has anything to gain by deceiving you.

One thing is quite certain, there are many facts which no native will disclose even to a countryman, or even to his own tribesman or dearest friend. He lives in a world of reticence