Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/325

 Correspondence. 307

and mystery, and this though under his normal conditions of social life there are no people who have more " solidarity " between members of the same caste and clan. The " bed-rock " idea in the mind of the rustic is that he is surrounded by demon- iacal influences against which he knows no mode of protecting himself except by the use of sundry spells and talismans which he must keep to himself if they are to retain any efficacy. Even his own name, and that of his wife or child, he often does not care to disclose, and he usually has a second name in reserve which no one but his Guru, or spiritual adviser, quite another person than his officiant Brahman priest, knows. When you reach a higher grade than that of the mere rustic, the tendency to this kind of reticence is still more clearly marked. This is especi- ally the case with the officiant Brahman and the Jogis, Gusains, Sannyasis, and other mendicant friars whom we class under the general and inaccurate name of Fakir. These people possess all sorts of secret beliefs, spells, and mystical observances, to which no European has ever secured the key, and it is hardly likely that, in our time at least, any Englishman ever will do so.

Lastly, I would say that, as far as Northern India is concerned, we have, I believe, as yet only very superficially examined the upper strata of the vast accumulations of folk-belief current among the people. The number of unrecorded tales, songs and ballads, proverbs and popular beliefs current among the rural population is immense, and will provide ample fields for inquiry for many a long year to come.

William Crooke.

As far as I can judge from my own experience, the art of collecting folklore is very much the same, and needs very much the same qualifications, whether the scene be an English county, a West Indian island, or a Malay or Siamese village.

The first requisite of a collector is that he should be in the highest degree sympathetic, and able instinctively to put himself on the right footing with his informant. Not an inferior footing : that would be to make himself despised ; on the other hand, the smallest assumption of the inferiority of his informant will lead to certain failure. The second requisite is that he should have some knowledge of strategy, sufficient at least for him to know by instinct when to make a " flank," and when a " frontal," attack.

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