We have mentioned that one of the great amusements, both of children and grown-up people, is story-telling—ku imba ntanu. This means literally ‘to sing a story,’ and points to the way in which tales are usually told. Most of them contain short pieces which are sung, and are known to every one—so that, when the narrator comes to them, the audience all join in. Steere points out that these sung parts are very common in the Swahili tales, and that the language found in them is older than what is usually spoken, or than the rest of the story.

Another curious point is that, when a man is telling a story late at night—say, beside the camp-fire or on a journey—at every pause in his narrative the hearers exclaim in chorus, ‘We are all here!’ As the tale goes on, the responses become fewer and fewer, and at last, when no one is left awake to answer, the recitation stops.

The stories told by the Bantu of British Central Africa are, broadly speaking, of three kinds. First, we have legends about the origin of men and things, such as we noticed in the fourth chapter, with which may be grouped the traditions telling whence the different tribes came, and how they reached their present homes. About these last I shall have something to say in the next chapter. Secondly, we have the kind of animal story so well exemplified in Uncle Remus. And, thirdly, tales in which people, animals, and sometimes preternatural beings are mixed up together in a series of more or less marvellous incidents—like our own fairy stories, in fact. Some of these we can trace as imported; but they are none the less curious on that account.

The animal stories seem to be the commonest and best known among the Anyanja—at least, nearly all the stories I could induce natives to tell me were of this kind. The tales collected by Mr. Macdonald, and published in Africana, however, belong largely to the first and second classes. Some are like very faint and far-off echoes of the Arabian Nights; these have probably been heard on the coast by Yaos who have gone down with trading-parties, and retold in the villages on their return. An example of this kind is ‘The Story of the Chief,’ which will be given later on.

Every one knows the delightful Uncle Remus tales, and will remember the cunning and resourcefulness of ‘Brer Rabbit,’ who, with his family, ‘wuz at de head er de gang when any racket wuz on hand, en dar dey stayed!’ It is now generally agreed that these stories came from Africa; and wherever any Bantu folk-tales have been written down, there we are pretty sure to find Brer Rabbit, under one alias or another. The Anyanja call him Kalulu, the Yaos Sungula—generally Che Sungula, ‘Mr. Rabbit’; though naturalists remind us, by the bye, that he is not properly a rabbit but a hare. One comes across the Kalulu by himself in the bush, and he makes a form in the grass, not a burrow in the ground. If I can trust my recollection of him, he is a little smaller than an English hare.

I cannot help feeling surprised that some writers on African folk-lore have chosen to ‘translate’ sungula, or its equivalent in other Bantu languages, by ‘fox,’ because the character assigned to the hare is in their opinion more appropriate to the fox. By doing so, we spoil one of the most characteristic features in the stories, and, moreover, lose an important distinction; for the place given by the Bantu to the Hare is occupied in Hottentot folk-lore by the Jackal.

Of course the animals in Uncle Remus are not all the same as those in the African tales; as some of the latter do not live in America, better-known ones have been substituted for them. Thus the Elephant, the Hippopotamus, the Lion, and the Python have disappeared, so has the Crocodile (‘Uncle Remus’ lived in Middle Georgia, where there are no alligators); and I fancy that Brer Wolf and Brer Fox have taken the place of the Hyena, who sometimes gets the better of the Hare for a time, but is always worsted by him in the end. The Tortoise (a land and not a water tortoise, usually) is as clever as Brer Terrapin, but is more bloodthirsty and vindictive—a kind of Shylock. The Baboon (nyani) does not seem to have an American counterpart, and the Cat, the Cock, and the Swallow, though one does not see why, have also dropped out.

A somewhat puzzling creature in the Nyanja tales is the Dzimwe, sometimes translated ‘elephant,’ though the native explanations are rather hazy, and leave one with the impression that he is a kind of bogey—perhaps akin to Chiruwi. One boy actually states that dzimwe (or, in the Likoma dialect, jimwe) sometimes means ‘an elephant,’ and sometimes ‘a spirit.’ In the present case, it seems more satisfactory to take it as the former; though in one or two stories we have the elephant under his proper Nyanja name of njobvu. In neither case does he act up to his reputation for wisdom, for in the end he is always cruelly victimised by the Hare.

The latter’s manners, I think, must have been softened by his sojourn in the States; for only on rare occasions—as when he puts an end to Brer Wolf with the boiling kettle—are his actions really cruel. We cannot say the same of the Kalulu; yet it would be a mistake to conclude, from the enjoyment with which these stories are received, that the African natives are a bloodthirsty and ferocious race. What they enjoy is the cleverness with which the tables are turned by the weaker party on the stronger, who seemed to have him entirely in his power. And, after all, generation after generation of English children have been fascinated by Jack the Giant-Killer, without being precisely horrified by the murderous stratagem practised by Jack on the Cornish giant.

The native does not recognise such a clear distinction between animals and human beings as we do. Animals do not speak, it is true, but, for all he knows, there may be nothing to prevent their doing so if they choose. He believes (and acts on the belief) that certain human beings can change themselves into animals and back again. So, in telling stories about animals, he seems continually to forget that they are not human, or perhaps, rather, he assumes that their habits, abodes, and domestic arrangements are very much the same as those of his own people.

One of the most typical of the Kalulu stories is the following, told me by one of the Blantyre native teachers. Being an educated man, accustomed to composition and dictation, he was able to give it in a very clear and connected form; whereas it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to make sense of those written down from the dictation of village children, who perhaps did not know the stories very well to begin with, and continually lost the thread when entreated to go slower or repeat a phrase.

‘The Hare and the Elephant were once friends, and the Hare said, “Come, man, and let us go and look for food.” And they went to a village and said, “We want to hoe for you, if you will give us food”; and the head-man said “Good.” And he let them hoe in his garden, and gave them some beans to eat there in the garden (in the middle of the day). And they went to the garden and cooked those beans. (They could make a fire as soon as they arrived, and put on the pot with the beans, so as to let them cook slowly while they worked.) When they had finished hoeing, the beans were done, and the Elephant said, “I am going to the water to bathe, do you look well after the beans, and we will eat them together when I return.” Then he went away and took off his skin, and ran, and came to the place where the Hare was. (We are to understand that he was quite unrecognisable in this condition.) When the Hare saw him, he was afraid, thinking that he was a wild beast, and he ran away; and the Elephant ate up those beans, and went back to the water, and put on his skin again, and returned, and said, “Have you taken off the pot with the beans?” And the Hare said, “No, my friend, there came here a terrible wild beast, and I ran away, and it ate those beans.” And the Elephant said, “No, you are cheating me—you ate those beans yourself—it was not a wild beast, no!” And the next day they went again to hoe, and cooked their beans. When the beans were nearly done, the Elephant said to the Hare, “I shall go and bathe—we will eat the beans when I return.” And he did just the same as before. When he returned and asked if the beans were ready, the Hare answered, “The wild beast came again to-day and has eaten the beans.” The Elephant said, “My friend, it is very deceitful of you to eat the beans twice over, and not let me have any!” And the Hare said, “Now, I am going to make a bow—if it comes again I will shoot it.” Next day, they put on their beans again; and the Elephant took the bow which the Hare had made, and said, “You have not made it well—give it to me; I will make it right for you.” And he kept on paring and shaving it, a little here and a little there, till he had made it too thin in one place, and said, “Now it is good; if the wild beast comes, you can shoot it.” Then he went down to the water, and took off his skin, and ran, and came where the Hare was. When the Hare saw that wild beast coming, he took his bow to shoot it, and the bow broke. So he ran away again, and the Elephant ate the beans, and came back as before, and asked, “Did you shoot the wild beast?” And the Hare answered, “No, my bow broke, and I ran away.” Next day they put on the beans once more, and the Hare went aside and made his bow, and hid it. When the Elephant went away to bathe, the Hare took his bow and held it in his hand, and took a barbed arrow, and when the wild beast came once more, he shot him through the heart, and the Elephant said, “Mai! mai! mai! mai! (mother!) Oh! my friend, to shoot me like this, because of those miserable beans! I meant to have left some for you to-day, that you too might eat!” And the Hare said, “Ha! my friend!—then it was you who finished up those beans by yourself, and I thought it was a wild beast!” The Elephant said, “Ha! to shoot me with a barbed arrow!—you have hurt me, my friend!—and how shall I get this out?” And he tried to pull out the arrow, and died. And the Hare ate the beans by himself, and went home.’

Another story in which these two figure is given by Mr. Macdonald under the title of ‘The Fox and the Hyena’; but this is in two parts—in the first, the Hyena plays a series of tricks on a long-suffering creature called the mbendu, apparently a kind of civet-cat; in the second, he tries to repeat these tricks on the Hare (for this is a case where ‘fox’ is used to translate sungula), and fails. In my version, the Hare is cheated at first, and learns by bitter experience; the closing incident, too, is different. The Hare and the Dzimwe went on a journey together, begging food (as native travellers do) at all the villages they came to. At the first, the Elephant said, ‘Let us ask for sugar-cane and bango reeds’ (which are uneatable); he then took the sugar-cane and gave the Hare the bango. At the next village he acted in the same way with millet and pebbles. At the next, the people had been cooking porridge; and the Elephant, in order to secure both the Hare’s portion and his own, sent the latter back to gather some ‘medicine’ leaves from a tree he had noticed on the way, saying that the nsima would not be good without them. The Hare, however, produced some from his bag; he had run back on the road, just after passing the tree, saying that he wanted to look for an arrow he had dropped, and had then picked the leaves. The Dzimwe was so disgusted at being outwitted that he would not eat, but left all the nsima to the Hare. Next day, however, when they reached another village, he contrived to get him out of the way for a time, and, on his return, refused to share his porridge with him (an almost unheard-of thing in native manners), alleging that, in the interval, ‘many strangers’ had arrived, and eaten up all the cooked food in the village, so that there was barely enough for himself. The Hare then retired, stripped off his skin, tied maseche rattles to his legs, and came and danced at the door of the hut where the Elephant was eating. The latter, thinking that he was a chirombo, fled and left him to finish the porridge. Subsequently, he was induced, by a stratagem not detailed in my version, to strip off his own skin, which the Hare hid while his back was turned. ‘And he said, “Who has taken my skin?” and since he was without a skin, he died of the heat.’

Brer Rabbit’s methods of disguise are less drastic. ‘He slip off en git in a mud-hole, en des lef’ his eyes stickin’ out’; and when Brer B’ar passed by and said, ‘Howdy, Brer Frog, is you see Brer Rabbit go by?’ answered, without turning a hair, ‘He des gone by.’ He plays the same trick on Mrs. Cow; but this time by hiding in a ‘brier-patch.’ In a Basuto story, he cuts off both his ears and pretends to grind meal on a flat stone; the hyenas in pursuit of him fail to recognise him, and ask him where the Hare has gone.

The trick by which the Hare induced the Elephant to destroy himself, is repeated with endless variations in other stories. In fact, it is found in all countries and all ages. The Cornish giant, already referred to, is one of the best known examples, and no doubt the men who chipped flints in Kent’s Hole laughed themselves into fits over something of the same sort. In one Nyanja story the Swallow invites the Cock to dinner, and pretends to fly into the pot where the pumpkins are cooking. In reality he disappears into the shadows of the nsanja, and then shows himself up aloft, afterwards alleging that his temporary presence in the pot has greatly improved the flavour of the pumpkins. The Cock, when returning the invitation, tries the same experiment, and is cooked most effectually. In another tale, the ntengu bird treats the wild-cat in the same way.

Apparently the Hare meets his match in the Tortoise—though the famous race is by the Anyanja related as taking place between the Tortoise and the Bushbuck (mbawala). On one occasion these two hoed a garden together, and the Hare cheated the Tortoise out of his dinner, as, on another occasion, the Elephant cheated him. The Tortoise, however, had his revenge a little later, when they were sowing ground-nuts; he crawled into the Hare’s seed-bag, as it lay on the ground, and ate up the supply. The Hare took this defeat so much to heart that he ‘went away and cried.’

All over the world we find tales intended to explain how animals came by this or that peculiarity which is striking enough to catch the attention, but has no obvious use. Thus, the Calabar people tell how the Tortoise fell off a tree and broke his shell to pieces, and had it stuck together again, so that the joins are visible to this day; and the Hottentots say that the Hare has a split lip because the Moon threw a piece of wood at him. We know how Brer Rabbit lost his long, bushy tail, through letting it hang in the water while fishing. The Anyanja also think that the Hare once had a long tail, and there is a story which relates how he had a piece cut off it at every village he passed through; but I have never been able to secure it in detail. There is a Yao tale to the effect that baboons are descended from a woman who ran away to the Bush because the chief had killed one of her children. She refused to shave her head (in mourning), and hair subsequently grew all over her body.

The Spider, who on the Guinea Coast is the principal figure in the animal stories, is, so far as I know, almost absent from Bantu folk-lore. One exception I have already referred to, in a Yao creation-myth; in another Yao tale he crosses a stream and makes a bridge for a chief to escape from his enemies. Here, however, he does not take a specially prominent part, being only one of four helpers provided by the spirit of the chief’s elder brother. The Spider is very prominent in the folk-lore of the Duala, who have probably borrowed him from their western neighbours.

We have mentioned that the natives see nothing strange in men assuming the forms of animals—they believe that it happens every day. Their stories give us many instances of the converse process—animals taking human shape whenever it suits them. Thus a girl marries a lion who has turned himself into a man, and, finding out his real nature, runs away from him. Another I give as I have it written down.

‘A person (a girl) refused (all) men; there came a baboon; he took off the skin from his body and was turned into a man. The Angoni woman married the baboon, and he hoed the crops, and his companions came from the Bush and ate the crops of his mother-in-law’s garden, and (so) he went (with them) into the Bush.’

But a better example still is that of the ‘Girl and the Hyena,’ which Mr. Macdonald thinks is intended as a warning to girls not to be too fastidious in their choice of husbands, and to accept those first suggested to them, lest worse befall. It might equally well be a warning against marrying a stranger from a distance, and certainly shows the tie between brother and sister in a very pleasing light. Here it is, as told me by Katembo at Blantyre.

‘There was a woman who refused all husbands, and at last there came a hyena, and she said, “I want this one.” (So they were married), and the husband said, “My wife, let us go home.” Her brother, who had sore eyes, followed after them, and she (saw him and) said, “Where are you going?” The brother crouched down and hid in the grass, and when they were out of sight he followed them again, till he came to the village. When his sister found he was there, she hid him in the hen-coop. When it was quite dark, a number of hyenas came outside the hut and sang:

‘The girl was asleep, but her brother heard them, and as soon as it was light he went and told her that they meant to eat her. She would not believe it, so he told her to tie a string to her little finger that night before she went to sleep, and leave the end outside the hut, so that he could take it with him into the chicken-house. In the middle of the night the hyenas came again, and, when he heard them, he pulled the string and woke his sister; so she, too, heard them singing:

‘In the morning she said, “I heard them, my brother.” Then he said to her husband, “Brother-in-law, lend me an adze, I want to make myself a big wooden top” (chinguli).[28] When he had finished it, he put it into his sister’s baskets (the luggage she had brought from home), and fastened it firmly, and put his sister into the baskets, and sang:

That is, “My top! take her home to her mother!”

‘It flew up and flew away over the Bush, and the hyenas followed; but he repeated the same song again, and they flew on till they were just above their mother’s village. Then he sang again, Chínguli chánga (and so on, as above), and the people heard it in the air over their heads, and looked up, and saw them; and the chinguli came to a stop, and let them down right on top of the grain-mortar. And then the brother said, “My sister wanted to send me back because I had sore eyes; but they would have eaten her at that village, and I have brought her home.”’ In another version, the mother follows this up with some more good advice, pointing out what she owes to her brother, and warning her ‘never to do it again.’

A favourite Yao story is that of the python (Sato) who was befriended by a man when caught in a bush-fire. He appealed first to a passing herd of buck to stop and save him, but they, considering that he had just eaten one of their number, not unnaturally refused. Then a man passed by with a hoe in his hand, and, on being assured that the python would not devour him, hoed up a piece of ground all round him, and thus saved him from the fire. The grateful python told him to come back in four days’ time, which he did, and found that it had changed into a young lad, who took him home, entertained him with plenty of beer, and finally presented him with two pieces (1 piece = 16 yards) of calico and a magic bottle, which was to be opened in presence of his enemies.

When the man went home, he found there was war; his family had fled, and the enemy were occupying the village. He opened his bottle, and they were immediately annihilated. He then went to hoe in the gardens, leaving his bottle and other property in his hut. Another detachment of the enemy arrived—they took possession of the village and all that was in it, pursued him to his garden, and took him prisoner. He was tied up, with his neck in a gori-stick, with a view to being killed next day. During the night he felt a rat gnawing his feet, and asked it to go to the chief’s house and bring the bottle. The rat did so, and the man said, ‘I will pay you in the morning.’ When the people were all assembled, and the man was brought out into the bwalo to be killed, he opened his bottle. ‘The people who sat there when he held it up were dead and gone’—there was no one there! So he rewarded the rat with two cows.

Animal stories sometimes vary in having one or more of their characters replaced by human beings: thus there is one in which the Antelope sets a trap and catches a Leopard in it. He spares the Leopard’s life, but meets with no gratitude, for the latter eats all his children, and then his wife. He appeals for help to a number of animals in succession, without getting it, till the Hare takes the case in hand, and induces the Leopard to put his head once more into the trap, and show how he was caught. Once in, the Hare advises the Antelope to kill him. Now the same story is told to explain why there should be a standing feud between crocodiles and men. The Crocodile behaved very much in the same way as the Leopard, and finally jumped on the man’s back and made him carry him. The Hare intervened, heard the whole story, and then asked the Crocodile to show him how he got into the trap, with results as above.

The Yao tale of the Hyena and the Bees is a version, with animal actors, of a story which, in various shapes, is probably found throughout the whole of Bantu Africa. The Basuto tell it of a girl called Tselane, who was carried off by a cannibal. He put her into a bag, which he threw over his shoulder, and started for home. On the way he stopped at a hut, which turned out to be her uncle’s, and laid down his sack while he went in to rest. Tselane’s relatives discovered her plight, let her out, and put in a dog and a quantity of venomous ants in her place. Consequently the cannibal, when he had shut himself up in his hut to enjoy his feast alone, died a miserable death. In the Yao story, the Hyena steals the fox’s (or jackal’s) cubs, and puts them into a bag; but the mother contrives to substitute a swarm of bees for them before he carries them off. ‘So the Hyena and his brethren died.’

There is a rather curious Nyanja story, introducing a being very like the Chiruwi mentioned in Chapter III. Some children went out into the Bush to gather masuku fruit. While they were out, it came on to rain, and the stream which they had crossed easily was full when they reached it on the way home, and too deep to ford. While they were considering what to do, there came along ‘a big bird, with one wing, one eye, and one leg,’ and carried them over, strictly charging them to tell no one at home that it had done so. One boy, however, told his mother what had happened; the rest all denied it, and asked people not to listen to him, saying they had crossed in the ordinary way. Next time they went to look for masuku they forded the stream, and some of them held out a branch to the boy who had talked, to help him over; it was rotten, and broke, and he was swept away by the current. They called out after him, ‘You told.’

Mr. Macdonald gives a story which in some respects reminds one of Grimm’s ‘Frau Holle,’ though not so much as does a Ronga one given by M. Junod under the title of La Route du Ciel. Both of these, though differing greatly from one another, are evidently the same tale. In the Yao one, a woman who has been persuaded by a trick to throw her baby into the water, and has seen it swallowed by a crocodile, climbs a tree in her distress, and says, ‘I want to go on high.’ The tree grows up with her and carries her to a strange country, where she meets, first, leopards, then the Nsenzi (a large kind of water-rat, or perhaps a bird), and lastly, some great fishes, who all show the way to Mulungu. When she reached ‘the village of Mulungu,’ she told her story. ‘Then Mulungu called the crocodile, and it came. Mulungu said, “Give up the child,” and it delivered it up. The girl received the child and went down to her mother. Her mother was much delighted and gave her much cloth and a good house.’

Her wicked companions were now envious, and, wishing to enjoy like good fortune, began by throwing their babies into the water. They climbed the tree and reached Mulungu’s country, but gave rude answers to the leopards, the nsenzi, and the fishes. ‘Then they came to Mulungu. Mulungu said, “What do you want?” The girls said, “We have thrown our children into the water.” But Mulungu said, “What was the reason of that?” The girls hid the matter and said “Nothing.” But Mulungu said, “It is false. You cheated your companion, saying, ‘Throw your child into the water,’ and now you tell me a lie.” Then Mulungu took a bottle of lightning, and said, “Your children are in here.” The girls took the bottle, and the bottle made a report like a gun. The girls both died.’

In the Ronga version, likewise, the wicked sister is killed by lightning. ‘Le ciel fit explosion et la tua.’ This story, which might almost be classed among religious legends (as, in fact, is done by Mr. Macdonald) has, in its simple way, something very pathetic about it.

The imported stories are interesting, as showing how their ideas and incidents have been translated, so to speak, into African. ‘Rombao,’ in Mr. Macdonald’s collection, told by a native of Quillimane, is perhaps of European origin. The names are Portuguese, and the theme is the familiar one of the Goose-girl; but it may be an Arab or Indian story which has acquired a Portuguese colouring on the Mozambique coast. M. Junod’s ‘Bonawasi’ is one of the Arab ‘Abû Nuwâs’ stories, which seem to be current all down the Swahili coast. Most of the Swahili tales in Steere’s collection are Arab, and some can be recognised in the ordinary editions of the Arabian Nights. It is curious to watch the gradual changes in the details, as these stories travel farther and farther into the interior. Harry Kambwiri, the Yao teacher who dictated the Hare story already given, once told me one which, he thought, must be ‘a story of the Azungu.’ He had got it from a Yao boy who had been to Zanzibar. I recognised it afterwards as the story of ‘The Three Blind Men,’ in Kibaraka. The Sultan’s treasure-chamber has become simply ‘the chief’s money,’ and the story is somewhat obscured by the loss of the distinctively Mohammedan touches. The ‘Story of a Chief,’ already referred to, was written down by one of the Yao boys educated at Domasi. It runs as follows:—

‘There was a chief who had ten sons, and three of them were poor. And the father brought three tusks of ivory to give to his three poor sons. The sons then said, “Let us go to the coast, let us buy goods.” And they called up men to carry their goods. Then they set off on their journey and came to the coast. When they arrived, they built a grass house and slept there one day. In the morning one of them set off with his tusk to buy goods, but his brothers did not know that he had gone to buy goods. And he bought a precious glass for looking into every land.

‘Then the second one set off and bought a mat for flying with into every land. Then the third bought a medicine for making people dead or alive. But each of these did not know that the others had gone to buy goods.

‘Afterwards, he who had the glass began to look into it. When he looked, he saw that in the land of his home there had died his friend. Then he told the others that there was a mourning, and they asked, “How do you know that at our home some one has died?” And he answered, “Because I looked in my glass.” Then he gave them the glass that they might look, and they saw their friend dead. Afterwards they began to grumble, saying, “If only we had medicine for flying”; and the second brother produced his mat. The others said, “Make us fly that we may reach our home to-day, that we may be at the funeral, because he was a friend of ours.” And he placed them on the mat, and they flew, and came to their village on the same day.

‘When they arrived, they again began to grumble, saying, “If only we had medicine to make this man alive, we would make him alive.” Then came the one who had medicine for making alive, and made the man alive again.

‘But afterwards there arose a dispute as to whom the man should belong. The one who had the glass said, “He is mine, because I saw him.” The one who had the mat answered, “I flew and conveyed you.” Then answered he who had the medicine, saying, “Did I not come and make him alive?” But the one with the mat said, “Could you have brought the man to life without him who carried you there?” The sons were then about to quarrel and came to the father, bringing the man with them. And the father said, “You have all done foolishly, because you bought precious things which take away all peace; you wished to excel beyond all men, but you have failed.”’

This story, it was found on inquiry, had long been known to several of the Domasi villagers. We see that the trading voyage has become the usual journey to the coast, and the magic carpet a mat; the claiming of the man as a slave (regardless of the fact that he is previously spoken of as a friend to be mourned), is a local touch. On the Lower Congo (see Dennett, Folk-Lore of the Fjort) we find a tale which is evidently the same as this, of two wives who between them brought their husband back to life. It is found in M. Junod’s collection under the title of Les Trois Vaisseaux; we have also a Swahili version, and one from the Kru coast in West Africa. The excellent moral does not suggest the Arabian Nights; but whether it is due to some shrewd old villager who had had sad experience of squabbles over the proceeds of prosperous ‘Coast ulendos,’ or is a reflection added by Peter Mlenjesi on his own account, may be left undecided.

There is yet another kind of story, which may be dismissed very briefly, as specimens of it have occurred in another connection. It contains nothing miraculous or even very wonderful, and is usually of a more or less humorous character, turning on absurd incidents of daily life, the little failings of husbands and wives, quarrels between neighbours, and the like; and might almost be considered as a rudimentary novel or farce. ‘The Man with the Bran-Porridge’ (Yao), and ‘The Man with Two Wives’ (Nyanja), are good examples of this.

These Bantu folk-tales are sometimes contemptuously dismissed as pointless and inane; and so, perhaps, they are, in translation, for it requires great skill in the language and knowledge of native ways to translate them intelligently, even when they are fairly well told. So much has to be supplied, or explained, which, in the original, is simply taken for granted, or has to be gathered from gesture and intonation. But though their literary value may be small, they are always instructive as a picture of native manners and ideas, which they illustrate by many little graphic touches. Besides, they furnish a kind of mental training to the people themselves. I have no hesitation in introducing here a quotation from M. Junod, because, though he is speaking of the Delagoa Bay natives, it will also apply to other Bantu tribes.

‘Every young man, every girl, knows one or two tales which he or she is always willing to repeat. Sometimes, even, they are expected to amuse the company with a story, told by way of forfeit, when they are the losers in a game. Beginners often get confused and break down. They mix up the incidents, or lose the thread of the narrative. “That is too much for you!” (literally, “that has overcome you,”) says the audience, and a more skilled reciter then takes the stage. Next time, the novice will acquit himself better. Besides, when the young people have come to an end of all they know, there remain the old women, who are the real repositories of tradition. Some of them know ten, twenty, or thirty tales, and I know more than one who could go on the whole evening, every day for a fortnight, without completely exhausting her stock.... Children exercise their memory in this way, and accustom themselves to speak in public; and it is perhaps to this custom that the South African races owe their extreme facility in expressing themselves.’[29]