Ebook: Akan-Ashanti Folk-tales

Publisher: CLARENDON PRESS
Publication date: 1930
Number of pages: 328 The task of compiling Folk-tales in West Africa-and possibly else where-may either present the collector with a somewhat difficult or a peculiarly simple task, according to the modus operandi pursued by him in gathering the necessary data. On the Gold Coast, where many of its inhabitants have a good knowledge of our language, the assistance of some of these literates may readily be obtained; they may be asked to write down in English such tales as they themselves happen to know, or detailed to collect similar stories from their illiterate fellow-countrymen. If a number of such helpers be employed, a large collection of tales may be obtained in a very short time, without much effort or any necessity for special qualifications on the part of the European collector, save the simplest preliminary organization. All that the latter will then have to do is to edit the English of his various African collaborators.' The most that can be said for such methods is that the results are perhaps better than not having anything at all.