He conversed with illiterate people, and especially with old women at their spinning-wheels, and eagerly listened to their ancient tales and legends.
He thus gathered together many a golden relic, which he afterwards made use of in his poetical works.

He studied Gascon like a pioneer.

He made his own lexicon, and eventually formed a written dialect, which he wove into poems, to the delight of the people in the South of France.

For the Gascon dialect--such is its richness and beauty--expresses many shades of meaning which are entirely lost in the modern French.
When Jasmin first read his poems in Gascon to his townspeople at Agen, he usually introduced his readings by describing the difficulties he had encountered in prosecuting his enquiries.

His hearers, who knew more French than Gascon, detected in his poems many comparatively unknown words,--not indeed of his own creation, but merely the result of his patient and long-continued investigation of the Gascon dialect.