Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/326

 3o8 Correspondence.

The " savage idea," as Mary Kingsley used to say, has to be stalked, and that warily, if any real success is to be obtained. The third, and the most important requisite, is that the collector should be ready, as Huxley said, " to sit down humbly before his facts."

The country people as a rule afford the best field for enquiries : the townsfolk are too often irredeemably self-conscious, sophisti- cated, ignorant, and ashamed of their old customs. Two cardinal rules should never be lost sight of; viz., ist: If you want to get information, begin by giving it; 2nd: Get rid of all your pre- conceived ideas.

I will try to exemplify what I mean. You happen to be travel- ling, and find an old hunter among your guides. Talk to him in an easy friendly manner, kindly but not over-familiar, as an English squire might to his gamekeeper. The Malay hunter has his " trade secrets," like any European gamekeeper. Say, for example, you want to get hold of a charm for harking on hunting-dogs. If you ask a Malay hunter for it straight out, he will say he " knows nothing " about it. So begin with general conversation, and lead up gradually to the subject of hunting. Tell him about European wild animals, the reindeer, the red deer, the roebuck ; then enquire about the different kinds of Malay deer, what sort of toils or snares are used for each ; the different kinds of dogs, which is the best, and how to get the best work out of a dog. Is there no kind of charm, such as is used elsewhere, which will enable a dog to work better ? He, as a good Moham- medan, of course says he doesn't know any charms, which are works of Iblis. (Here bring up your heavy guns.) " Oh, but old What's-his-name, the deer-wizard in the next district, told me to say so-and-so " (here you repeat or improvise a few lines), " and people say he is very clever." This puts him on his mettle. "That's not true, Tuan," he says: "people have told you wrong." By this speech of course he gives his case away, and with a little more of the lightest pressure apphed judiciously according to cir- cumstances, out comes the very charm you are in want of.

This illustration is intended of course rather as a sample of method than of matter. But most races require at first some such diplomatic pressure as I have described. You never get two absolutely identical versions of any charm from two different wizards. If you do not know any charm to begin with, get a