Page:The Folk-songs of Southern India.djvu/32



has often been said that there is no better way of discovering the real feelings and ideas of a people than that afforded by the songs that pass from lip to lip in their streets and markets. None know from whence they come. Verses are added to or subtracted from them as new ideas come in or old ones pass away. Thus they keep up to date, as it were, the expression of those inner feelings which never rise to the surface of a set literature, but are in reality the very essence of popular belief. Their satire is often sharp, and never fears to attack shams, however venerable they may be. Such satire is often the only means left to the illiterate and obscure of showing that the priestcraft, the outer polish, the grosser abuses as well as the showier fabries, which to outsiders seem to be the life of the nation, are in no sense the life or even a portion of the life of the millions who in reality form the mass of the nation, but who are far too often utterly forgotten by those who judge a people by its upper ten thousand. A lengthened residence in India has shown that the Dravidians or Hindus of Southern