Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/327

 Correspondence. 309

medicine-man to treat you for headache or something of the sort, and ask him what charm he employs, for your own future benefit. Check your information by going to the next man interested in the subject in hand ; tell him (indirectly or otherwise), what you have heard, and ask him if that is right. By collating the various versions you may be able to discover a key to the meaning of any doubtful words. The evidence required to establish a fact of folklore is the same in kind as the evidence required to establish a fact in a court of law. In some cases the testimony of a single witness may be taken, but in most, corroboration is required, and the less direct the better.

The people in authority in any district are not those to go to for unbiassed information. Expressions of opinion by a chief or a Raja are usually tinged by political or social considerations. A Raja or Sultan will often think it infra dig. to admit that he knows anything about magic ; a peasant has no position to lose, and his information will be ten times more trustworthy. Again, the religious authorities are fairly certain to try to conceal from a stranger the existence of any form of magic or superstition twt countejianced by their professed reiigio?i, even though they may practise it themselves continually.

Country people are more truthful than townsfolk, whose evidence is not nearly so worthy of consideration. Ninety per cent, of my best information came from country people. Up-country people in savage lands will not as a rule tell Hes, if you only know how to get hold of them and approach them gradually in the way I have tried to indicate above. Undue and undeserved suspicion of their statements will destroy confidence and defeat its own ends by drying up the flow of conversation. I should like, too, to endorse what Mr. Addy says about the importance of being able to laugh and joke with them (not, by the way, at them!) to set them at their ease. Again, it must be remembered that if the natives are approached in the wrong way, they will get puzzled, suspicious, frightened, and will take refuge in point-blank denials to protect the?iiselves, as they imagine. And a European cannot always tell what mistake he has made. I remember a case in point. I once went up river to a district inhabited by a wild jungle tribe who had been little visited by white men. On going ashore, I visited the chief at his house, and later on began to question him about his tribe, their language, and so on ; and among other things I asked