Page:Folk-lore of the Telugus.djvu/9



INTRODUCTION.

is within every person's experience to enjoy with all attention the tales told by his grand old dames, to climb their knees, to share the envied kiss. There is hardly anybody, I think, who does not look back with fond attachment to those home associations,, with those innocent sweet simple pleasures, whence first we started into life's long race.. We feel them, while the wings of fancy still are free, even in age and at our latest day.. While the unthinking mind is satisfied with these grandmothers' tales as such, the thinking mind goes a step further and endeavours to gather knowledge from these tales of childhood. There are a good many to whom familiarity breeds contempt, and who, in blissful ignorance, scoff at folklore. But the ethnologist cannot fail to regard it as a sine qua non of the study of the racial development. There are many in whom grandeur hears with a disdainful smile