dance, eat and make merry under the auspices of their parents and elders, who seem to take delight in the merriment. Traces are also to be found of a feast on the old mounds in the evening. On the whole there seems to have been a connection between the feast-making of St. John’s Eve and an ancient festival in honour of the dead.
Some Experiments on the Reproduction of Folk-Stories.
(Folk-lore, vol. xxxi. p. 30.)
Apropos of Mr. F. C. Bartlett’s “Experiments on the Reproduction of Folk-stories,” may I tell, in an abbreviated form, a story also told to me by my friend Samson. I will presently explain its relevancy to Mr. Bartlett’s experiments. (The story as I now tell it has acquired a quasi-moral shape, and I head it with the moral title “Waste not, want not.”)
Once upon a time, a blind man and a hunchback were great friends, and used to to out begging together. When they had exhausted the charity of their native village, they set out together into a far country. As they were plodding along, the blind man, setting foot on something that felt like a snake, cried alound in fright. But the hunchback said, “That is only a frayed old elephant-tether. Come along, you fool!” The blind man, however, said “Waste not, want not. Put the rope in my wallet.” So said, so done.
Presently, when the friends were fording a river, the blind man trod on something hard and round in the water, and begged the hunchback to pick it up. The hunchback dived into the current and produced a small tortoise, which he was for throwing away. “Not so,” said the blind man; “waste not, want not. Put that too in my wallet.” So said, so done.
A little further on, the travellers came to where some cowherd lads were amusing themselves in the shade of a peepul tree by dancing to the sound of a drum. “Ah,” said the hunchback, “If only we had a drum wherewith to amuse ourselves
