Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/207

Rh the like manner the tendency of untutored nations is naturally towards the exaggeration of the terrors with which they invest persistent enemies in the past, and hence arises much ethnological Folk-lore—the monkey races and the Râkshasas of India, the ogres or Uigur Tâtârs of Europe, the Giaours (Jaurs) and Guebres (Gabrs) or fire-worshipping opponents of the early Arab conquerors of Persia. In the case of History and Geography, as long as sober facts are purported to be related, let the relation be as inaccurate as it may, there is no Folk-lore. Thus, however unfounded and capable of refutation Macaulay's version of the doings of Warren Hastings and Sir Elijah Impey may be, it is in no part Folk-lore; but when the natives of Bengal come to telling us that Nuncomar (Nand Kumâr) was a very holy man who was hung by the English by a golden chain on a gallows fixed in the middle of the Ganges in answer to his petition to the gods that he might die in the full possession of his faculties and in the act of prayer, they are repeating a true legend and Folk-lore is in the ascendant. The body of the Nawâb of Lohârû, who was hanged for encompassing the death of Mr. Fraser at Dehlî some fifty years since, no doubt swung round, as is related, after death to the direction of Mecca (Makkâ). This may be called a fact of history, but when you add, as the natives of Dehlî do, that this was because he was innocent and a martyr, you are repeating a fact of Folk-lore. The same reasoning applies to all matters connected with ancient remains and antiquities generally. To Language the definition seems to be peculiarly applicable. Men have long observed that words grow up around them and have a derivation one from another. Especially is this the case with familiar proper names of people and things; and in all climes the populace has invented derivations for appellatives, the real origin of which has been lost. In India the processes of folk-etymology are still a living force in guiding the popular fancy. The native mind has not at all yet reached the scientific stage, and, consequently, the most childish derivations are everywhere gravely asserted as reasonable origins for the forms of names. This happens, too, in quarters where such things are the least to be expected. In the Panjâb Notes and Queries I have collected a string of native derivations of tribal and caste names, which are purely imaginary,