Folk-lore from the Dominican republic / by Manuel J. Andrade.

FOLK TALES1
METHOD OF COLLECTING
The majority of the tales have been recorded phonetically. Only
47 were written by the informants themselves, or dictated by
illiterate persons to some one who could write, most frequently to
their own children. I have corrected the orthography of the latter
without altering the language. A great deal of caution was observed
in accepting written stories. As a rule, I required that they be
written on the premises, while I worked with other informants, or
that they be recited to me before the informants wrote them at
their convenience. This was allowed only in communities where
books were rare objects, if they existed at all. In every case, the
language, the composition and the subject matter of each story are
sufficient evidence of the fact that they were reproduced from oral
tradition.
Having met with considerable sophistication in the towns, and
even in small villages, I decided to concentrate my efforts on the
peasants. Thus, the majority of the tales were not obtained in the
towns and villages mentioned in the text, but on the farms near
them. The most propitious time to engage the services of these
farmers was in the early part of the afternoon, when all their
activities were suspended for a few hours. In the towns I have
found some good informants among bootblacks, and among the
idlers who may always be found in parks or about the piers or the
market places. I have tried, so far as possible, to engage adults, but,
due to the demands of their daily routine, this was not always
practical. Women seem to take more interest in stories than men,
1 The citations in the comparative notes on the tales are as follows: SPANISH,
Aurelio M. Espinosa: Cuentos populares espaioles, Stanford University
Publications, 1923. PORTO Rico, J. A. Mason and Aurelio M. Espinosa:
Porto-Rican Folk Tales, Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 34, (1921) to
vol. 42 (1929). CAPE VERDE, Elsie Clews Parsons: Folk-Lore from the Cape
Verde Islands, Memoirs the American Folk-Lore Society, Vol. XV, 1923.
BAHAMAS, Elsie Clews Parsons; Folk Tales of Andros Island, Bahamas,
Memoires of The American Folk-Lore Society, Vol. XIII, 1918.
The references are intended mainly to indicate obvious and probable
correspondences between the following material and that of the most
important Spanish collections. I have included the folklore from the Cape
Verde Islands and that of the Bahamas in view of the similar admixture
of European and African elements. As these collections contain extensive
references to others, and it has come to my knowledge that intensive
comparative work in Spanish folklore is being done on a large scale by at
least two authorities, I have attempted merely to find one correspondence
for each one of the Dominican tales.