erienced it. Messia
witnessed my birth and held me in her arms: hence I have been able to
collect from her mouth the many and beautiful traditions to which her
name is appended. She has repeated to the grown man the tales she had
told to the child thirty years before; nor has her narration lost a
shade of the old sincerity, vivacity, and grace. The reader will only
find the cold and naked words; but Messia's narration consists, more
than in words, in the restless movement of the eyes, in the waving of
the arms, in the gestures of the whole person, which rises, walks around
the room, bends, and is again uplifted, making her voice now soft, now
excited, now fearful, now sweet, now hoarse, as it portrays the voices
of the various personages, and the action which these are
performing."[5]

Such a woman as is here described is a born story-teller; and her art,
as exhibited in the tales attributed to her in Dr. Pitre's collection,
reaches perhaps the highest point possible in tradition. Women are
usually the best narrators of nursery tales. Most of the modern
collections, from that of the brothers Grimm downwards, owe their
choicest treasures to women. In the Panjab, however, Captain Temple
ascribes to children marvellous power of telling tales, which he states
they are not slow to exercise after sunset, when the scanty evening meal
is done and they huddle together in their little beds beneath the
twinkling stars, while the hot air cools, the mosquito sings, and the
village dogs bark at imaginary foes. The Rev. Hinton Knowles' collection
was gathered in Cashmere apparently from men and boys only; but all
classes contributed, from the governor and the pandit down to the barber
and the day-labourer, the only qualification being that they should be
entirely free from European influence.[6]

But nursery tales told simply for amusement are far from being the only
kind of traditional narrative. Savage and barbarous races, to whom the
art of writing is unknown, are dependent upon memory for such records as
they have of their past; and sometimes a professional class arises to
preserve and repeat the stories believed to embody these records. Among
the Maories and their Polynesian kinsmen the priests are the great
depositaries of tradition. It is principally from them that Mr. White
and the Rev. W. W. Gill have obtained their collections. But the orators
and chiefs are also fully conversant with the narratives; and their
speeches are