Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Hausa Folk-Lore, Customs, Proverbs, Etc, Vol. 1 of 2: Collected and Transliterated With English Translation and Notes
Such a' method, however, is more easily prescribed on paper than followed in the field. When the witness is illiterate - as commonly happens when there is genuine folk lore to be gathered - its application proves exceedingly troublesome, for reasons that may readily be divined. A more or less formal dictation lesson has somehow to be given and received; and the several parties to it are only too apt to conspire each in his own way to render it a failure. Thus the story-teller, on the one hand, is probably shy and sus picious at the outset; is put out of his stride by the slightest interruption; and, becoming weary all too soon, tends to take short cuts, instead of following to the end the meandering path of the genuine tradition. The reporter, in his turn, is incessantly puzzled by the idiom, more especially since in such a context archaisms will be frequent; boggles over a pronunciation adapted to a monotonous sing-son g delivery, or else, perhaps, to a dramatic mimicry carried on in several voices; and is likely to be steadily outpaced into the bargain.
Mr. Rattray's happy thought, then, was to remedy the practical shortcomings of the standard method by finding some one who, as it were, could dictate to himself; who, in other words, could successfully combine the characters of story-teller and reporter in his single person.
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