Folklore is not as easy to collect as it sounds. The best source is where there are the least outside influences, and these people, being usually under-privileged, are the shyest... The Negro, in spite of his open-faced laughter, his seeming acquiescence, is particularly evasive... The Indian resists curiosity by a stony silence. The Negro offers a feather-bed resistance - Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (1935)