tories,
sometimes droning them out in a sort of monotonous chant, sometimes
delivering them with a startling amount of emphasis and gesticulation.
The boys and younger men add to the noise by marching round the houses,
blowing horns and playing on flutes. There is but little rest to be
obtained in an Indian settlement by night. These people sleep, as dogs
do, without difficulty, for brief periods, but frequently and
indifferently by day or night as may be convenient. The men, having
slept at intervals during the day, do not need night-rest; the women are
not considered in the matter. At last, in the very middle of their
stories, the party drops off to sleep; and all is quiet for a short
while. Presently some woman gets up to renew the fires, or to see to
some other domestic work. Roused by the noise which she makes, all the
dogs of the settlement break into a chorus of barks and yelps. This
wakes the children, who begin to scream. The men turn in their hammocks,
and immediately resume their stories, apparently from the point at which
they left off, and as if they had never ceased. This time it is but a
short interruption to the silence of the night; and before long
everything again becomes quiet, till some new outbreak is caused, much
as was the last. In the very middle of the night there are perhaps some
hours of quiet. But about an hour before dawn, some of the men having to
go out to hunt, effectually wake everybody about them by playing flutes,
or beating drums, as they go to bathe before leaving the settlement."[8]

But the folk-tale cannot be separated in this inquiry from the folk-song
with which, in its origin and development, it is so closely connected.
In India there are, or were until recent years, everywhere professional
bards; and the stories told in Indian villages are frequently the
substance of the chants of these bards. More than this, the line between
singing and narration is so faintly drawn, that the bards themselves
often interpose great patches of prose between the metrical portions of
their recitations. Fairs, festivals, and marriages all over India are
attended by the bards, who are always ready to perform for pay and
drink. Mr. Leland believes the stories he obtained from the Christian
Algonkins of New England, concerning the ancient heroes of the race and
other mythical personages, to have once been delivered as poems from
generation to generation and always chanted. The deeds of Maori warriors