FOR a large proportion of the world's inhabitants the traditional tale is even
today one of the principal forms of entertainment. Books, the cinema, and
the radio have not yet changed age-old habits among people essentially out
of the reach of these modernizing agencies. Hundreds of millions in India
and China, in fact nearly the whole native population of Asia, and of the
entire continent of Africa except recent colonies; the natives of Australia and
New Zealand and of all the Pacific Islands; the Indians of North and South
America--all of these still depend on the song, the dance, and the folktale
for their amusement and their aesthetic expression. And there are still parts
of Europe and groups among those peoples sharing European culture where
the oral tale lives on actively in spite of education and books. But here it is
primarily a peasant activity, and has largely ceased to interest the other
social and intellectual classes.

Whether among the peasants of western Ireland or among the natives of
Lapland, India, or Alaska, folktales are much more than a casual part of the
life of those who tell them and hear them. Even where the reciting of tales
is to be expected of everyone, there is every effort to make a story interesting
and pleasing to the audience. And where taletelling is the function of a
chosen few, professional or semiprofessional, it is cultivated as a serious art.
Voice, gesture, and narrative effects are carefully studied and practiced. The
man who excels is rewarded with the esteem of his fellows and with much
coveted prestige.

The exact nature of these effects of voice, gesture, and narrative art have not
yet received adequate study. Only the Märchen, which in its present charac-
teristic form is confined within relatively narrow limits both of age and
geographic territory, has been accorded real attention by students of literary
style. The whole world of primitive tales, and the local and historic legends,
jests, and anecdotes of all peoples challenge the folklorist to try to understand
the nature and practice of oral narrative art.

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