JOURNAL 
OF THE 
ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL 
Part I.—HISTORY, LITERATURE, &e. 
No. II.—1883. 
Folktales from the Upper Punjab.—By the Rev. C. Swvnnerton', 
M, R. A. S., Chaplain of Number a. 
“ In Winter’s tedious nights, sit by the fire 
With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales !” 
The tales and stories which I propose to present to the notice of mem¬ 
bers have been literally gathered on winter’s nights from the lips of the 
peasantry of the Upper Panjab. So far as I am aware, not one of them 
has appeared in print; but in any case, whether some few of them have 
been published or not, there must still exist in the ensuing series a pecu¬ 
liarity of treatment and a freshness of incident, together with many other 
important points of difference, which will mark this collection as an original 
effort, interesting in itself, and interesting too for purposes of comparison. 
The story-tellers were partly Panjabis, and partly Pathans ; some of them 
were tottering old men, and some of them youths, robust and strong. They 
are the tales which are the delight of the village Hazrah on winter’s nights, 
when icy winds are blowing, and when the young men gather round the 
blazing fire to hear of the fantastic deeds of giants and fairies, and the 
adventures of animals and men, or when the village guest, if not too tired 
to sit up, alternates the recital of fictitious wonders by news from the 
great world, or commands the attention of auditors as simple as himself 
by circumstantial accounts of most disastrous chances, of moving accidents 
of his own, by flood and fell. It was at the little village of Ghazi on the 
river Indus, thirty miles above A'tak, that many of these stories were 
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