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« on: July 18, 2019, 05:58:56 PM »
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pumpkins and gourds sprang up, and in due time bore fruit. Some children passing by stopped to look at them and said: “ How fine these big pumpkins are! Let us get father’s sword and split them open! ” One of the pumpkins, we are told, “ became angry ” and pursued the children, who fled till they came to a river, where they got an old ferryman to take them across, and, passing on, reached a village where they found the men seated in the council-house and asked for help. “ Hide us from that pumpkin! The Zimwi has turned into a pumpkin and is pursuing us! When it comes, take it and burn it with fire ! ” The pumpkin came rolling up and said : “ Have you seen my runaway slaves passing this way? ” The men replied: “What sort of people are your slaves? We do not know them! ” “That’s a lie, for you have shut them up inside! ” But they seized the pumpkin and, having made a great fire, burnt it to ashes, which they threw away. Then they let the children out, and they returned home safely to their mothers.
In parts of West Africa, such as Sierra Leone, where Eng- lish (of sorts) has almost become the vernacular, the Zimwi , or whatever his local representative may have been called, has become a “ devil ” (or, more usually, “ debble ”). Thus we find, among Temne stories, 25 “ The Girl that Plaited the Devil’s Beard ” and “ Marry the Devil, there’s the Devil to Pay.” The latter introduces a theme which recurs again and again in “ were -wolf ” stories: a girl who had refused all suitor's is at length beguiled by a handsome man who is really a disguised “ debble.” Like some varieties ofi the Zimwiy he has only half a body; but he borrows another half for the occasion: “he len’ half-side head, half-side body, all ting half-side.” On the way to his home, his wife sees the borrowed parts drop off one by one. The husband prepares to kill and eat her, but she is saved by her little brother, who had insisted on following her, though sent back again and again.
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Among the Kikuyu, “ the Ilimu takes the form of a man, either normal or abnormal in shape, and talks like a man, £ but is a beast.’ His body is either wholly or in part invul- nerable. His great characteristic is that he feeds on human flesh.” 26 In one of the stories, he is described as having one foot and walking with a stick, “ and his other foot comes out at the back of his neck, and he has two hands.” If this is correctly reported, it looks like a distorted recollection of the Half-man.
The Wachaga seem to attribute various forms to their Irimu. One has already been mentioned. He seems some- times to be associated with the idea of a leopard: in fact Gut- mann calls him “ the were-panther ” (W erpardel) , 27 but this description certainly will not always fit — for instance, in the following story . 28 Here, presumably, we are to understand that the dog’s nature became changed after drinking the child’s blood: the indestructible part (here, the skull) is a feature oc- curring elsewhere; but it is not clear how far the creature developed out of it is the same as the original dog.
There was a certain young married woman, named Muko- sala, who had a small child. She had no one to help her in looking after it; but, one day, a strange dog appeared at the homestead, and took to coming regularly, as Mukosala fed him. She grew so used to him that one day, when she wanted to leave the house, she said: “ I will give you this bone, if you watch the baby nicely till I come back.” The dog agreed, and performed his task well for a time; but, growing impatient, he took the bone and cracked it, and a splinter flying from it hit the baby’s neck and drew blood. Unable to resist the sight of the blood, he sucked at it till he had killed the child, which he then devoured. He took the bud of a banana-tree (which may be quite as large as a small baby), laid it on the bed and covered it with a cloth, saying to the mother, when she re- turned: “ Take care not to wake him: I have just fed him.”
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But she very soon discovered what had happened and, sending him away to fetch dry banana-leaves, called her husband. When the dog came back, they seized him, bound him securely and threw him on the heap of dried leaves, which they set on fire, so that he was consumed, even to the bones, all except the skull. This rolled away, first into an irrigation-channel and thence into the river, which washed it up into a meadow. Some girls, coming down to cut grass by the river, and chewing sugar-cane as they walked, saw the skull and took it for a white stone. Some of them cried out: “What a beautiful white stone! — as pretty as baby brother! ” and threw it some of their sugar-cane as they passed. But one laughed at her friends, and said: “ How silly! how can a stone be like your baby brother? ” They finished cutting the grass, helped each other up with their loads and turned to go home. But when they came back to the skull, they found that it had grown into a huge rock which barred their path. So they began to sing spells in order to remove it. The first one sang:
“ Make room and turn aside!
Let us pass! Let us pass!
She who laughed in her pride Is far behind — turn aside! —
We come with our bundles of grass —
Let us pass! Let us pass! ”
The rock moved aside and let her through. Each of her companions in turn sang the same words and went on. Last of all came the girl who had jeered at the skull, and she, too, sang the magic song, but the rock never stirred. So she had to wait there till evening. Just as it was growing dark, a leopard appeared and asked her: “ What will you give me, if I carry you over? ”
“ I will give you my father.”
“That won’t do! ”
“ Or my mother! ”
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“ No use.”
“ I’ll give you the ox next the door, at home.”
“ No.”
“The one in the middle — the one next the wall? ”
“ I don’t want any of them.”
“ Then I will be your wife.”
“ I agree to that,” said the Leopard. “ Now hold on to my tail! ”
She did so, and he climbed the rock, pulling her after him. But, just as he had got half-way, his tail broke, and she fell down. Other leopards came, one after another, but the same thing happened to each. At last came a leopard with ten tails, who made the same bargain as the rest. She seized all his tails at once and was carried safely over. After he had gone a little distance with her, he asked if she could still see her father’s house. She said that she could, and he went on, re- peating the question from time to time, till she answered: “ I can still see the big tree in the grove by my father’s house.” Still he kept on his way up the mountain side and soon came to a rock, where he stopped and cried: “House of the Chief, open! ” The rock opened, and they entered the leopard’s dwelling, which consisted, like a Chaga hut, of two compart- ments, one for the people and one for the cattle. He took up his quarters in the latter, leaving the other to his wife, whom he kept well supplied with fat mutton and beef. He himself lived on human flesh, but he always brought his victims in by night and hid them in the cow-stall, so that his wife never saw them . 29 After some months, when he considered her fat enough (a fact ascertained by stabbing her in the leg with the needle or awl used in thatching and mat-making), he went out to invite his relatives to the feast, telling them to bring a sup- ply of firewood with them. While he was gone, her brothers, who had been searching for her, reached the rock. She heard their voices and called out to them the magic words
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which would open it. They came in and she set food before them, but the husband came home suddenly, and she had only time to hide them in the spaces under the rafters, where the young leopards slept. The cubs began to growl, and the Irimu became suspicious, but his wife pacified him by saying that they were hungry. The brothers escaped during the night, while he slept. Next day, after he had gone out, the wife smeared herself all over with dirt, and also plastered dirt on the threshold, the cooking-stones, the posts to which the cattle were tied, and the rafters of the roof. To each of these she said, “If my husband calls me, do you answer, ‘Here!’”
Then she got out of the house 30 and hastened homeward. On the way, she met one after another of the Irimu’s kinsfolk, each one carrying a log of wood on his shoulder. Each one, as he passed her, asked: “ Are you our cousin’s wife? ” and she answered: “ No, his wife is sitting at home, anointing herself with mutton-fat! ”
They suspected nothing and passed on, to be met by the Irimu , who conducted them to the rock and called his wife. The threshold answered “Here! ” but no one came, and he called again. This time the voice answered from the fire- place, and so on, till he had searched the whole house in vain and come to the conclusion that his wife had escaped. He then heard from his guests how they had met her and been deceived by her and, leaving them to make the preparations for the banquet, he set out in pursuit.
Meanwhile the wife had reached a river too deep to ford and cried: “Water, divide! Let this stand still and that flow! ” Immediately the stream divided, and she went through dryshod, and, having gained the further bank, said: “ Water, unite and flow on! ” The water did so, and she sat down to rest and cleanse herself. Presently the Irimu appeared on the other side and asked her how she had got across. She
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answered: “ You have only to say to the water, ‘Divide! Let this stand still and that flow! ’ But when you are in midstream, say, ‘Come together again! ’ ” The Irimu did as he was told and was carried off by the current. As he was being swept out of sight, he cursed her, saying: “ Wherever you go, you shall only see people with five heads! ” She called after him: “ Go your way and take root as a banana-tree! ”
The woman went on, and soon came upon some people who had five heads. When she saw them, she burst out laughing, and four of each person’s heads dropped off. They said: “Give us back our heads! ” So she gave them strings of beads and passed on. The same thing happened over and over again j but at last she reached her parents’ village in safety. The IrimUy for his part, was washed ashore by the stream, took root on the bank and became a banana-tree.
The concluding incidents, as we have them, are not very clear, but we may perhaps connect the last one with, another Chaga story , 31 where a woman, carrying her baby with her, goes to the river-bank to cut grass, and finds a banana-tree with ripe fruit . 32 She says: “Why, these are my bananas! ” and the bananas reply: “ Why, that is my son! ” The little child breaks off a banana and one of his fingers drops off. Subsequently, they meet an Irimu , who tears the child to pieces. The relation between the Irimu and the banana-tree is not stated, but may be guessed without difficulty, when we recall the preceding story, and the pumpkin-plant which sprang from the dead Zimwi in the Swahili tale . 33
The latter part of the “ Irimu’s Wife ” belongs to the numerous tales which have been classified under the heading “ Flight from Witchcraft.” It is found here in a compara- tively simple form, the obstacles occurring in most of them being reduced to one — the river. And here we may remark that the dividing of a river — either by a mere “ word of power,” as here, or by striking it with a staff — is too common
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an incident in African folklore to be ascribed to echoes of missionary teaching. It occurs, not only in fairy-tales, but also e.g. in the traditions of the Zulus, who bring it down to so recent a period as the northward migrations of Zwan- gendaba, about 1825. The Basuto, 34 in the tale of “The Nyamatsanes,” describe a man flying from ogres, who throws a pebble behind him. This becomes a high rock, which they cannot pass. Where the obstacles are multiplied, as in the Swahili “ Kibaraka ” (thorns, rock, swords, water, fire, sea), outside influence would seem to have been at work.
The theme is exemplified in nearly every part of Africa, sometimes in a very close parallel to “ Hansel and Gretel,” but more usually in the case of a girl married to an ogre (or were -wolf ) and saved by a younger brother or sister. Some of them we shall have to notice in a later chapter.
CHAPTER IX
THE LITTLE PEOPLE
W E HAVE mentioned Kitunusi and Chiruwi among the uncanny denizens of the wood and wild in Tanaland and the Shire Highlands respectively. Both these beings link on to a set of legends, which seem, like those of the elves and “ Good People ” in Europe, to refer, ultimately, to some former inhabitants of the country, of smaller stature and lower culture than the later invaders, yet possessed of knowl- edge and skill in certain arts which gave them a reputation for preternatural powers. Some had a knowledge of metal work- ing, others a familiarity with the ways of wild animals and the properties of plants, which might seem little short of miracu- lous to the more settled agricultural or even the pastoral tribes. The mystery of their underground dwellings; their poisoned arrows; their rock-paintings and sculptures (which, moreover, seem to have served some magical purpose) — all had a share in building up their mythical character. As regards Europe, the subject has been fully treated by Mr. David MacRitchie in The Testimony of Tradition and other works.
The Giryama, whose country adjoins that of the Pokomo, have the Katsumbakazi, who appears to be in some respects akin to the Kitunusi. He is, says the Rev. W. E. Taylor, 1 “a p'ep'o or jinn, said to be seen occasionally in daylight. . . . It is usually malignant. When it meets any one, it is jealous for its stature (which is very low) and accordingly asks him: 1 Where did you see me? 1 If the person is so unlucky as to answer: £ Just here, 1 he will not live many days; but if he is aware of the danger and says: 1 Oh, over yonder! ’ he
PLATE XXVI
Group of Ituri Pygmies.
After a photograph by E. Torday.
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will be left unharmed, and sometimes even something lucky will happen to him.”
This sensitiveness as to their size appears to be a common trait among similar beings. Mr. Mervyn W. H. Beech 2 heard from the Akikuyu elders in Dagoreti district that the country was “ first inhabited by a race of cannibal dwarfs called Maithoachiana.” These were followed by some people called Gumba, said to have been the makers of the old pottery now sometimes dug up, and also to have taught the Akikuyu the art of smelting iron. Mr. Beech was informed by the District Commissioner of Fort Hall that “ the Maithoachiana appear to be a variety of earth-gnomes with many of the usual attributes ; they are rich, very fierce, very touchy, e.g. if you meet one and ask him who his father is, he will spear you, or if he asks you where you caught sight of him fir^t, unless you say that you had seen him from afar, he will kill you. . . . Like earth-gnomes in most folklore, they are skilled in the art of metal working.”
There seems to be some difference of native opinion here, as some say it was the Gumba who were the metal-workers. Stone implements are found everywhere in the Kikuyu country. Again, some say it was the Gumba who lived in caves, as many of the people round Mount Elgon still do; others that it was the Maithoachiana who lived in the earth. Maithoachiana means, in Kikuyu, “ eyes of children.”
There are legendary dwarfs called by the Swahili Wabili- kimo. Krapf says 3 that they are said to live four days’ journey west of Chaga, “they are of a small stature, twice the measure from the middle finger to the elbow.” Krapf, or his Swahili informant, endeavours to derive the name from -bili (~wili) ) “two,” and kimo, “measure”; but it very likely belongs to some language of the interior, and the Swahili may have followed the practice of popular etymologists all over the world in trying to get a meaning, by hook or by crook,
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out of an otherwise unintelligible word. In Giryama, mbiri- kimo is “ a member of the rumoured race of Pygmies,” 4 and I have myself heard of them, quite accidentally, from a Gir- yama; at any rate it seems clear that the name and the story came from the interior. Krapf says: “The Swahili pretend to get all their knowledge of physic from these pygmies ” (this is his gloss on the statement that they go to “ Mbilikimoni ku tafuta ugangay 1 to search for medicine ’ ”), “ who have a large beard and who carry a little chair on their seat which never falls off wherever they go.” Krapf goes on to make severe re- flections on the fables invented by the “ credulous and design- ing Swahili ”; but the last statement has some foundation in the fact that several tribes of the interior are in the habit of carrying their little wooden stools slung at their backs by a hide thong, when they travel; and, seen at a distance these might be taken for a fixture of their anatomy.
“ All medicine ” (uganga, generally understood as refer- ring to the occult department) “ is in their country ”; and herein, they resemble Bushmen, Lapps, and elves. But it is not clear whether they are the same people as the Kikuyu Maithoachiana.
In Nyasaland, Sir Harry Johnston 5 found, twenty-five years ago, that the natives had a tradition ag to “ a dwarf race of light yellow complexion,” living on the upper part of Mlanje mountain. These may have been actual Bushmen, and, indeed, a careful study of the population in some parts of the Protectorate suggests that there must have been a con- siderable absorption of Bushman blood in the past. “ They gave these people a specific name, 1 A-rungu,’ but I confess this term inspired me with some distrust of the value of their tradition, as it was identical with that used for 1 gods.’ ”
It may only have meant that these “ little people ” were passing into the mythical stage which they, or some like them, have already reached in other parts of Nyasaland. Dr. H. S.
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« on: July 18, 2019, 05:58:11 PM »
CHAPTER VIII
TALES OF DEMONS AND OGRES
W E FIND, all over Africa, more or less, the notion of beings which cannot be explained either as ghosts or personified Nature-powers and which perhaps may be most ap- propriately called “ Haunting Demons.” Not all of those can be properly described as monsters, though many have more or less monstrous characteristics. Some are, no doubt, nightmare-phantoms originating in the horror of lonely places: the dark recesses of the forest, the poisonous swamp, the blaz- ing heat of noon over the sandy scrub. But even here the line is very difficult to draw. Klamroth, 1 for instance, after making a very careful study of the spirits or demons extant in Uza- ramo, came to the conclusion that many, if not all of them, such as Mwenembago, the “ Lord of the Forest,” were ghosts who had taken to haunting the wilds. On the other hand, Aziza, the Hunter’s God or Forest Demon of the Ewe,' 2 is clearly (if we may say so), an intensified chimpanzee.
The Pokomo describe a being which haunts the forests of the Tana and the open bush-steppe bordering on them, to which they give the name of Ngojama . 3 It has the shape of a man, but with a claw (“ an iron nail,” said my informant) in the palm of his hand, which he strikes into people if he catches them. He then drinks their blood. This creature has by some Europeans been supposed to be an anthropoid ape 4 — no species of which has hitherto been recorded from East Africa. I think he is more likely to be purely mythological.
From a Musanye at Magarini (in the Malindi district), I learnt that the ngojama , though something like a human being,
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has a tail, like certain Masai “ devils.” 5 A man of the nar- rator’s tribe, long ago, came to grief through mistaken kindness to a ngojama. He came across him in the bush, wandering about and eating raw meat: he took him in hand, taught him to make fire and to cook, and had to some extent civilized him, when suddenly, one day, the ngojama reverted to type, turned on his benefactor and ate him.
The Nama Hottentots of the Kalahari tell of queer and monstrous shapes haunting the scrub and the sand-dunes: the Aigamuchab 8 who have eyes on their feet — on the top of the instep — instead of the usual place. They walk upright, their eyes looking up to the sky; if they want to know what is going on around them, they progress on hands and knees, holding up one foot, so that the eye looks backwards. They hunt men as if they were zebras, and tear them to pieces with their terrible, pointed teeth, which are as long as a man’s finger. These cannibals are not solitary, like the ngojama. , but live in villages, with their wives and children. There are stories of people straying into an Aigamuchab village and escaping with difficulty. Another mythical tribe of the same sort are the “ Bush- jumpers,” Hai-uriJ who progress through the scrub by jumping over the clumps of bush instead of going round them.
Another denizen of the Pokomo forest is the Kitunusi , who seems to be related in some degree to the Giryama Kaisumba- kazi , who, again, has points of contact with the “Little People ” discussed in our next chapter. The Katsumbakazi is said to be of very low stature ; 8 so is one kind of Kitunusi (there are two) 9 — according to my Pokomo informant’s indi- cation, he stands about two feet six. The other is of normal human height, but does not appear so, as it is his habit to move about in a sitting position. Thinking he must be some primi- tive kind of cul-de-jatte , I enquired whether he was devoid of legs, but was assured that he had them. He is greatly feared, for those who meet him are apt to be seized with severe
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illness and perhaps lose the use of their limbs. But in old times people sometimes wrestled with him, and, if they could succeed in tearing off a piece of the kaniki waist-cloth which is his usual wear, their fortunes were made. A man would put away this bit of rag in the covered basket in which he kept his choicest possessions, and he would somehow or other (my in- formant did not enter into particulars) become rich.
Here is a link with the Chiruwi , 0 who haunts the woods in Nyasaland, and to whom we shall presently return. The Swa- hili of the coast seem to be acquainted with the Kitunusi but to have a different conception of him . 11 He lives in the sea, and is dreaded by fishermen. He is variously described as “ a large fish which devours men who are bathing or diving in the sea,” or as the spirit possessing such a fish — as Krapf quaintly says, “ the natives believe that a ghost or Satan sits in the fish and instigates him ” (without the fish’s knowledge, we are else- where informed) “ to swallow a man.”
This might suggest that the Pokomo Kitunusi is really a water-sprite, like the Zulu Tokolotshe or Hill} 2, This would not be surprising, when we remember how the River Tana is bound up with the life of this tribe, and how much of their time they pass either on or in the water; but I have met with nothing to support this notion. On the contrary, the Kitunusi seemed rather to haunt the sandy scrub away from the river.
The Chiruwi just mentioned belongs to a very numerous family, who figure in the mythology of other continents besides Africa and who might be called “ half-men,” as they are usually more or less human in shape. Their body is split longitudinally: — they have only one eye, one ear, one arm and one leg — only in one instance do we find an obscure mention 13 of a person divided transversely. They may be malevolent or the reverse: a Nyanja tale 14 relates how, some children being cut off by a river in spate, they were carried across by a “ big bird, with one wing, one eye, and one leg.”
PLATE XXIV
Masks used in initiation ceremonies by the Bap- ende. Probably intended, in the first instance, to represent the spirits of the dead. After photographs by E. Torday.
TALES OF DEMONS AND OGRES 245
Chiruwi ( Chitowi of the Yao) 15 is a being of this class, who haunts the forest, carrying an axe of the ornamental kind which is borne before chiefs. Some say that one side of him is made of wax, others that it is missing altogether, and “ he is invis- ible if viewed from the off-side.” If any one meets the Chiruwi , the latter says: “ Since you have met with me, let us fight together.” They then wrestle, the odds being on Chiruwi , who is “ very strong,” and, if the man is overcome, he “ returns no more to his village.” If, however, he is able to hold out, till he throws Chiruwi down, the latter shows him all the valuable medicinal herbs in the bush, and he becomes a great doctor. The Baila of the Middle Zambezi 16 have a simi- lar belief, but their Sechobochobo is of kindlier mould, “ he brings good luck to those who see him, he takes people and shows them trees in the forest which can serve as medicine ” — without any preliminary conflict.
The Subiya 17 also have their Sikulokobuzuka ( <c the man with the wax leg”). A certain man named Mashambwa was looking for honey in the forest, when he heard Sikulokobuzuka singing, but did not at first see him. He heard a honey-guide calling, followed him to the tree where the bees had their nest, lit his torch, climbed the tree and took the honey. He had scarcely done so when he saw Sikulokobuzuka coming. He came down with his wooden bowl of honey, and the goblin immediately demanded it of him. Mashambwa refused, and the other challenged him to wrestle. They struggled for a long time, and Mashambwa, finding his opponent very strong, and despairing of victory as long as they were on the grass, into which Sikulokobuzuka, could hook his foot, pulled him off on to the sand and threw him down. He then said to him : “ Shall I kill you? ” The other replied: “ Don’t kill me, master 5 I will get you the medicine with which you can bewitch people to death.” “ I don’t want that medicine — is there no other? ” “ There is another — one to get plenty of meat.” “ I want that
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one.” So Sikulokobuzuka went to look for it and showed him all the medicines good for getting supplies of food, and also that which gains a man the favour of his chief. Then they parted. Mashambwa lost his way and wandered about till evening, when he once more met the wax>- legged man. The latter guided him home to his village and left him, telling him on no account to speak to any one. So Mashambwa went into his hut and sat down on the ground, and when his friends addressed him, he never answered; and at last they said to each other: “ He has seen Sikulokobuzuka .” Then he fell ill and remained so for a year, never speaking throughout that time. At the end of the year, he began to recover, and one day, seeing some vultures hovering over a distant spot in the bush (this seems to have been a sign that his probation was over), he said: “ Look! those are my vultures! ” and sent some men off to the place. They found a buck freshly killed by a lion, and thence- forth Mashambwa never wanted for food or any other nec- essaries.
These half-men can scarcely be classed as ogres; but there are various tribes of ogres having only one arm and one leg, while others, though in various ways monstrous and abnormal , 18 have not this peculiarity. The Basuto call the former class of beings “ Matebele ” 19 — probably from having come to look on their dreaded enemies, the Zulu tribe of that name, as something scarcely human. The tale of Ntotwatsana relates how, while a chief’s daughter was out herding the cattle on the summer pastures, a whirlwind caught her up and carried her to a village of the Matebele “ who had but one leg, one arm, one ear and one eye.” They married her to the son of their chief, and, to prevent her escape, buried a pair of magic horns in her hut. One night, she tried to run away, but the horns cried out:
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“ U— u-u— e! it is Ntotwatsana, who was carried away by a whirlwind in the pastures,
When she was herding the cattle of her father, of Sekwae! ”
Then the Matebele came running up and caught her.
As time went on, she had two children, twin girls, who were like their mother, with the usual number of limbs. Years passed, and one day the maidens went to the spring to fetch water, and found there a warrior with his men. He called to them and asked: “ Whose children are you? ”
“ We are the children of the Rough-hided One.”
“Who is your mother? ”
“ She is Ntotwatsana.”
“ Whose child is she? ”
“ We do not know — she has told us that she was carried away by a whirlwind in the pastures.”
So he said: “Alas! they are the daughters of my younger sister.”
Then some of his men drew water for them, while others cut reeds and trimmed them neatly with their knives. Their uncle said to them: “ When you get home, ask your mother to go and get you some bread, and, when she is gone, hide the reeds under the skin she sits on.”
So they went home, put down their water-pitchers, and began to cry, telling their mother, who was sitting outside the hut, that they were very hungry and asking her to get them something to eat. She got up to fetch them some bread, and as soon as her back was turned, they slipped the bundle of reeds under her rug. When she came back, she sat down on the reeds and crushed them: the girls began to cry again, and when their mother found out what was the matter, she said she would send a young man to get other reeds for them. As they had been instructed, they acted like spoilt children, and insisted that no reeds would do unless their mother picked them herself. So she went to the spring and of course found her
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brother there, whom she recognised at once, and who asked her when she would come home. She explained that she was un- able to come, on account of the horns, and he said: “ If you are wise, warm some water, and when it is boiling pour it into the horns, then stop up their openings with dregs of beer, and lay some stones on top of them, and when it is midnight, take your two children and come here.”
She did as directed, and at midnight called her daughters, and they went down to the reed-bed by the spring, taking with them a black sheep. The horns tried to give warning, but, being choked could only produce a sound “ U-u-^u ” — which the villagers took for the barking of the dogs. They had gained a considerable start before the horns succeeded in clear- ing their throats and cried:
“ U-u-u-e! it is Ntotwatsana, who was carried away by a whirlwind in the pastures,
When herding the cattle of her father, of Sekwae! ”
The Matebele started in pursuit, hopping on their one leg. It was beginning to dawn, and they were drawing near to the travellers, when the sheep lifted up its voice and sang:
“ You may as well turn back, for you have no part nor lot in us.” 20
The Matebele stood still in astonishment, gazing at the sheep, which then began to dance, raising its tail and dig- ging its hoofs into the ground. When Ntotwatsana and her companions had again got the start of their pursuers, the sheep disappeared and, by some magical means, overtook its friends.
“The Matebele departed, running as in a race; they ran wildly through the open country, one before the other. They arrived near Ntotwatsana. The sheep sang and danced again, then disappeared. When the Matebele departed, they said: ‘By our Chief Magoma! we will go, even if we were to arrive
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at Ntotwatsana’s village ; that little sheep, we must simply pass it, even if it dances and sings so nicely.’ They went on.”
However, when the incident was repeated, they grew weary and gave up the pursuit. Selo-se-Magoma, the Rough-hided One, went home sadj but the brother and sister reached their village in safety and found every one mourning Ntotwatsana as dead. So the story ends happily.
A favourite character in the tales of the Zulus and the Ba- suto is the Izimu ( Lelimo ), usually rendered “cannibal”} but his characteristics suggest that “ ogre ” is a more appropri- ate term. It is quite clear that what is meant is not a man who has taken to eating his fellow-men — as did certain unfortu- nate people in Natal, during the famine that followed on Tshaka’s wars 21 — but something decidedly non-human. This word, as has been remarked in a previous chapter , 22 is found in closely allied forms in most Bantu languages} but the creature connoted is not always the same. Sometimes he be- longs to the class of half-men} sometimes he seems more akin to the monsters Kholumodumo , U silo simapundu and Isikquk- qumadevu. There is a strange Chaga tradition of a man who broke a tabu and became an Irimu. 2Z Thorny bushes grew out of his body, till he became a mere walking thicket and de- voured men and beasts. He made himself useful, however, by swallowing a hostile war-party who were raiding the country, and was finally disenchanted, under the advice of a soothsayer, by his brother, who came up behind him and set the bushes on fire.
The name Dzimwe , used by the Anyanja, is evidently the same word, and is somewhat vaguely defined as meaning “ a big spirit,” but in their tales, he seems somehow or other to have got confused with the elephant, and figures chiefly as the butt and victim of the Hare, filling in some instances, the exact part played by the Hyena, or, in the New World by Brer Fox and Brer Wolf. The Swahili have not departed
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so far from the original conception of their Zimwi, but the word has been to some extent displaced by the borrowed terms jini and shetani. The Swahili version of a very popular story runs as follows : 24
Some girls had gone down to the beach to gather shells. One of them picked up a specially fine cowry, which she was afraid of losing, and so laid it down on a rock till they returned. On the way back, she forgot her shell till they had already passed the rock, when she asked her companions to go back with her. They refused, but said they would wait for her, and she went back alone, singing. There was a Zimwi sitting on the rock, and he said to her: “ Come closer, I cannot hear what you say! ” She came nearer, singing her petition: “ It is getting late! let me come and get my shell which I have forgotten! ” Again he said: “I can’t hear you! ” and she came still nearer, till, when she was within reach, he seized her and put her into the drum which he was carrying. With this he went about from village to village, and, when he beat the drum, the child inside it sang with so sweet a voice that every one marvelled. At last he came to the girl’s own home and found that his fame had preceded him there, so that the villagers entreated him to beat his drum and sing. He demanded some beer and, having received it, began to perform, when the parents of the girl immediately recognised their child’s voice. So they offered him more beer, and, when he had gone to sleep after it, they opened the drum and freed the girl. Then they put in “ a snake and bees and biting ants,” and fastened up the drum as it had been before. Then they went and awakened him, saying that some people had arrived from another village, who wanted to hear his drum. But the drum did not give forth the usual sound, and the Zimwi went on his way disconcerted. A little later, he stopped on the road to examine his drum; but, as soon as he opened it, he was bitten by the snake and died. On the spot where he died,
PLATE XXV
Dance of Yaos (near Blantyre), both men and women taking part.
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of the personified sun. We have the tale of Kyazimba , 24 who was “ very poor ” and, in his sore extremity, set out for “ the land where the sun rises.” As he stood gazing eastward, he heard steps behind him and, turning, saw an old woman who, on hearing his story, hid him in her garment and flew up with him to mid-heaven, where the sun stands at noon. There he saw men coming, and a chief appeared and slaughtered an ox and sat down to feast with his followers. Then the old wo- man, whose identity is not revealed, asked his help for Kya- zimba, whereupon the chief blessed him and sent him home, and he lived in prosperity ever after. Still more striking is the story of a man who having lost all his sons, one after another, said, in his rage and despair: “What has possessed Iruwa to kill all my sons? I will go and shoot an arrow at him.” So he went to the smiths and had a number of arrow- heads forged, filled his quiver, took his bow and said, “ I will go to the edge of the world, where the sun rises, and when I see it I will shoot — ti-chi! ” (a sound imitating the whistling of the arrow). So he arose and went, till he came to a wide meadow, where he saw a gate and many paths — some leading to heaven, others back to earth. Here, he waited for the sun to rise; and suddenly, in the silence, he heard the earth resounding as if with the march of a great multitude, and voices cried: “Quick! open the gate, that the King may pass through! ” Then he saw many men coming, goodly to look on and shining like fire, and he was afraid and hid himself in the bushes. Again he heard them cry, “ Clear the road for the King! ” and another band passed. Then appeared the Shining One himself, radiant as glowing fire, and after him yet another troop. But those in front said: “ What stench is here, as if a son of earth had passed? ” They searched about, found him and brought him before the King, who asked him, “ Whence come you? and what brings you to us? ” The man answered: “ Nothing, lord — it was sorrow which drove me from home;
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I said to myself, ‘ Let me go and die in the scrub.’ ” The King said: “ How is it, then, that you said you were going to shoot me? Shoot away! ” But the man did not dare. Then the King asked him what he wanted. “ You, O Chief, know with- out my telling you.” “ Do you want me to give back your children? There they are” — and the Sun pointed behind him — “ take them away and go home.”
The man looked and saw his lost children, but they were so changed, so beautiful, that he could scarcely recognise them, and said: “ No, lord, these are yours. Keep them here with you! ” So the Sun said: “ Go home, and I will give you other children instead of these. Moreover, you will find something on the way which I shall show you.”
So he went his way and found game in such abundance, that he had enough to eat till he got home, and also many tusks, which he buried, till he should be able to come back for them with his neighbours. With this ivory he bought cattle and became rich; and in due time sons were born to him, and he lived happily.
The Rainbow, as is natural, has attracted attention every- where ; it is looked upon as a living being — usually a snake, and, curiously enough, often dreaded as a malignant influence. The people of Luango, however, believe in a good and an evil rainbow . 25 Sometimes it is not itself the snake, but merely associated with it; the Ewe 26 look on it as the image, reflected on the clouds, of the great snake Anyiewo, when he comes out to graze or, according to others, to seek for water in the clouds. His ordinary abode is in an anthill, out of which he arises after rain and to which he returns. If he falls on any person he at once devours him, for which reason both rainbow and anthills are regarded with dread. But if any one can find the spot where either end of the rainbow has touched the earth, his fortune is made, for these are the caches of the famous “ Ag- gry ” and “ Popo ” beads, which are so prized, as they cannot be
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manufactured now, but are only dug out of the earth — from old graves and forgotten sites . 27 The Subiya 28 also associate the Rainbow with anthills though they do not seem to figure it as a serpent, but as a “ beautiful animal ” not further de- scribed. If you come across him, you must run in the direction of the sun, for then he cannot see you; if you run away from the sun, he catches you and you are lost. But those who know how to take the proper precautions can sometimes see him come out of his ant-heap and frolic about with his children — “ C’est comme de jeunes chiens qui jouent agreablement,” says M. Jacottet translating from his native informant.
The Zulus 29 appear to have given various accounts of the rainbow, which they call either umnyama , “ the animal,” or utingo Iwenkosikazi , “ the Queen’s Bow ” or rather “ Arch,” that is, one of the bent rods or wattles forming the house of the Queen of Heaven. Some say that it is a sheep — which does not seem easy to understand; others that it lives with a sheep, or that it lives with a snake — in any case, its dwelling- place is a pool. Its influence is peculiarly unpleasant. Utsh- intsha’s testimony, as related to Bishop Callaway, is as follows: “ I had been watching in the garden when it was raining. When it cleared up, there descended into the river a rainbow. It went out of the river and came into the garden. I, Utsh- intsha, the owner of the garden, ran away when I saw the rainbow coming near me and dazzling in my eyes; it struck me in the eyes with a red colour. I ran away out of the garden . . . because I was afraid, and said: 1 This is disease;' why does it come to me? ’ Men say : 1 The rainbow is a disease. If it rests on a man, something will happen to him.’ So, then, after the rainbow drove me from the garden, my body became as it is now, that is, it was affected with swellings.”
At the beginning of the rainy season in the tropics — espe- cially where, as in Natal, it coincides with the hot weather, people often suffer from boils, prickly heat, or some equally
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distressing complaint. This particular witness had “ a scaly eruption over his whole body,” which, whether caused by atmospheric conditions or not, no doubt coincided with the appearance of the rainbow.
There is a curious Chaga tale 50 of a Dorobo who set out to ask God for cattle and, coming to the place where the rain- bow touches the earth, remained there praying for many days. But no cattle appeared. When, at last, it became clear that his prayers were in vain, “ his heart swelled,” and he took his sword and cut through the rainbow. Half of it flew up to the sky; the other fell down and sank into the earth, leaving a deep hole. Some people, who had the curiosity to climb down into this hole, found that it gave access to another country so attractive that they felt disposed to stay there. But they were soon driven away by lions — it is not stated whither they fled or what became of them, and when a further contingent of settlers arrived, they found the first-comers gone, heard the lions growling, and returned. No one has ventured down since.
Some young Masai warriors 31 are said to have killed a rainbow, which came out of Lake Naivasha by night and de- voured the cattle at their village. On the third night of his coming, they heated their spears in the fire and waited for his appearance, when they stabbed him in the back of the neck, just behind the head — his only vulnerable part.
An interesting Kikuyu 32 legend makes the Rainbow, Mu- kunga Mbura, figure in the “ Swallower ” myth referred to in a previous chapter. A curious point in the story is that, when the hero is about to kill Mukunga Mbura, the latter says: “ Do not strike me with your sword over the heart, or I shall die, but open my little finger, . . . make a big hole, not a little one.” When the boy did so, all the people and cattle whom the Rainbow had eaten came forth from the incision, just as the cows came out of the old woman’s toe in “ Masilo and Masilonyane,” 33 a story which does not otherwise belong to
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the same group. Another feature connecting this story with the ogre tales to be dealt with in our next chapter is that, when it was decided, after all, to destroy Mukunga Mbura, lest he should come again to eat people as before, and the warriors hacked him to pieces, one piece went back into the water. The warrior then went home and said that he had killed Mukunga Mbura, all but one leg: “ but tomorrow I will go into the water and get that leg and burn it. ” But when he came back next day, the water had disappeared ; there were only a num- ber of cattle and goats grazing on the plain. “ What remained of Mukunga Mbura had gathered together his children and taken all the water and gone very far — but the beasts he had not taken but left behind.”
Of myths connected with thunder and lightning, perhaps the most remarkable is that of the Lightning-bird, which is best known from the Zulu accounts 5 34 but we find that the Baziba 35 also think that lightning is caused by flocks of bril- liantly-coloured birds, which are flung down to earth by Kayu- rankuba, the spirit presiding over storms ; the thunder is the rushing sound of their wings. The Zulu Lightning-bird is described by Callaway’s informant as red and glistening ; it is sometimes found dead where the lightning has struck the earth and is greatly prized by medicine-men as an ingredient in powerful charms. But the Lightning-bird has also been directly identified as a kind of heron, called by the Boers hammer-ko'p {Scofus umbretta ), the destruction of whose nest is said to cause rain. Some say that the Lightning-bird buries itself in the ground where it strikes and has sometimes been dug up by an isanusi (doctor) ; others 36 that it lays a large egg, which the isanusi tries to dig up, though none has ever yet found one.
Thunder is more often spoken of as a person than lightning, which is sometimes called a weapon or instrument — the Wa- chaga 37 call it “ God’s axe,” and the Lower Congo people 38
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say that it is made by a blacksmith, living in the centre of Ka- kongo. The Thunder is by them called Nzasi and goes about hunting, with twelve couples of dogs. A native told Mr. Dennett how he had once seen Nzasi’s dogs. “ It was raining, and he and his companions were under a shed playing at marbles, when it began to thunder and lighten. It thundered frightfully, and Nzasi sent his twenty-four dogs down upon them. They seized one of the party who had left the shed for a moment, and the fire burnt up a living palm-tree.
This recalls a curious experience related by an old Chaga woman to Gutmann and probably to be explained in the same way — illusory images impressed on the retina dazzled by the lightning-flash and shaped by sub-conscious thought. She said she saw God (Iruwa), apparently in human shape, but “as large as a cow,” one side of his body shining white, the other red as blood. He had a tail, which was also parti-coloured — red and white. It is a remarkable fact that the Heaven- dwellers are sometimes represented as tailed . 39
Another Congo man had a disastrous encounter with Nzasi . 40 Going through the bush he was caught in the rain, and, hastening home, met a beautiful dog, wet through, like himself. He took it into his hut, meaning to keep it as his own, and lit a fire to dry and warm it, but “ suddenly there was an explosion, and neither man, dog, nor shimbec (hut) was ever seen again.” The dog, Antonio said, was Nzasi himself — but thunder and lightning are often spoken of as one.
A different aspect of the lightning appears in another inci- dent related as true by the same Antonio : 41 “ There is a man still living who declares that he was translated to heaven and saw Nzambi Mpungu. He lives in a town not far from Lo- ango. He says that, one day, when it was thundering and lightning and raining very heavily, and when all the people in his village, being afraid, had hidden themselves in their shimbec ? , he alone was walking about. Suddenly, and at the
PLATE XXIII
1. Majaje, a famous chief tainess and rain-maker in the mountains of North Transvaal. She was be- lieved to be immortal and is said to have suggested to Rider Haggard the idea of his romance She. The truth seems to be that there was a succession of “ Majajes,” and the death of each one, when it oc- curred, was kept secret by her councillors.
2. The “ New Yam ” ceremony in the Calabar country; chiefs pressing forward to partake of the offerings. Analogous “feasts of first-fruits” are found, probably all over Bantu and Negro Africa — e.g. the ukutshwama of the Zulus. The idea seems to be that it is not safe to make use of the new crops till the chief has “ taken off the tabu ” by tasting them.
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moment of an extraordinarily vivid flash of lightning, after a very loud peal of thunder, he was seized and carried through space till he reached the roof of heaven, when it opened and allowed him to pass into the abode of Nzambi Mpungu. Nzambi Mpungu cooked some food for him and gave him to eat. And when he had eaten, he took him about and showed him his great plantations and rivers full of fish, and then left him, telling him to help himself whenever he felt hungry. He stayed there two or three weeks, and never had he had such an abundance of food. Then Nzambi Mpungu came to him again and asked him whether he would like to remain there always, or whether he would like to return to the earth. He said that he missed his friends and would like to return to them. Then Nzambi Mpungu sent him back to his family.”
Leza 42 is sometimes identified with the lightning, and the “ red ” and “ black ” gods of the Masai 43 with the lightning and the rain-cloud. Elsewhere, we do not often find the rain regarded as a distinct personality, except among the Bushmen, who record various instances of the Rain being made angry by inconsiderate conduct. Miss Lloyd on one occasion found a curious and beautiful fungus, which she carried home and kept for some days. Subsequently, as she feared it was going bad, she desired the Bushman, Hankasso, to throw it away . 44 He demurred, but finally removed it, explaining afterwards that he had not thrown it away, but laid it down gently, as it was “ a rain’s thing,” and must not be treated roughly. His care did not prevent a tremendous downpour, which he attrib- uted to the displeasure of the rain at the ejection of the fungus.
In general, stories about rain are concerned with the pro- ducing or withholding of it: it is well known that (as is only natural in a country where water is scarce) the rain-maker’s is a most important profession among the Bantu. The Giryama, in time of drought, practise incantations at the grave of a woman, Mbodze, who was a famous rain-maker in her day,
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and who — inconsistently enough — is said to have been caught up to heaven in a thunderstorm.
The late Bishop Steere published, in the South African Folk-Lore Journal , 45 a story which would appear to be con- nected with some myth of this sort. It was related, as current among her own people, by a girl in one of the mission schools at Zanzibar, a freed slave who had been brought from the Chipeta country, west of Lake Nyasa. At a time when water was scarce, though food was plentiful, some little girls went to play in the scrub outside their village, carry- ing with them their miniature cooking-pots and some pro- visions. Among them was a child whose parents were both dead. She said to her companions: “ I will show you some- thing, but you must not tell any one.” They all promised to be silent. Then she stood and looked up at the sky, and pres- ently clouds began to gather, and in a short time there was a heavy shower, which filled their water-jars, so that they were able to cook their food; but it did not reach the village. When they went home, they took some of the cooked food with them, but refused to answer any questions as to how it had been ob- tained. Next day they went out again, and the orphan girl procured rain as before; but this time one of the other children secretly brought a second water- jar, and, when she had filled it, hid it in the bushes, while she used the other for cooking. That night she told her mother, under promise of secrecy, and showed her where she had hidden the water-jar, which they brought back to the house. As might have been expected, the story was soon all over the place, and at last reached the ears of the chief. He sent for the child to the council-place, loaded her with gold ornaments, and directed her, in the pres- ence of the assembled people, to bring rain. (We may perhaps infer that there had been ineffectual attempts at persuasion. The “ gold ornaments ” are probably a touch only introduced after the story had reached the coast region.) She asked all
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the bystanders to retire to a distance, but they refused. Then she looked up at the sky and sang; the clouds collected, and presently there was a great rain, with lightning and thunder, and, in the midst of it, the child was caught up to the sky and never seen again.
Not very long ago, I read over the orginal Swahili of the above to a Zanzibar man, who was a Zigula by birth, and fairly versed in his native folklore, though he had been at sea, and out of touch with his own country for years. He did not pro- fess to recognise it, but remarked at the end that the little girl who brought the rain was mtoto wa malaika , “ a child of the angels”; which may have been a Moslem way of saying that she belonged to the Heaven-dwellers referred to in pre- vious chapters. It seems likely, too, that the explicit statement of her parents having died was inserted by some narrator who did not fully understand the story, and that the original merely said either that she had no parents or that no one knew who they were, as was the case with Vere.
The sea does not figure very largely in Bantu mythology: it is only a few tribes who have been long enough in touch with it to have any ideas on the subject . 46 The tribes of the Guinea coast include sea-gods and goddesses in their pantheon, but do not seem to personify the element itself; and, in gen- eral, we may repeat what has been said on previous occasions, that sea-spirits, like river-spirits, lake-spirits, tree-spirits, etc., are not so likely to be personifications of these phenomena, or even powers specially and exclusively attached to them, as, in the last resort, ghosts of mortal men.
That there may be spirits of another sort, who are not ghosts, nor exactly what we mean by Nature Powers, is not disputed; and these, as “ Haunting Demons,” will come within the scope of the next chapter. But some, even of these, can be shown to have started in life as ghosts . 47
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himself} he sent a beetle in his place, and went off to play. Then, having tied the Hyena into a bundle of brushwood, the mother sent Galikalangye to bring it in; but he looked at the bundle and remarked : “ I can carry one three times as big as that,” which so scared the enemy that he fled. This having failed, his mother told him to set a trap, and, after dark, when the Hyena has ensconced himself beside it, she said that it had fallen. “ Has it? ” said her son. “ My trap always falls three times.” Said the Hyena: “ What sort of trap is this which falls three times? ” and, once more, ran away. Finally, the mother shaved Galikalangye’s head all down one side and told the Hyena to fetch him when asleep beside the fire} but the boy got up in the night, shaved his mother’s head in the same way and retired to the back of the hut. The Hyena came, and, finding a person who answered the description asleep beside the fire, killed and carried off the mother . 36
The Nyanja Kachirambe, however, after a series of escapes very similar to the above, forgives his mother, after killing the Hyena. The points of contact with the Hubeane legend are obvious} so are the important differences.
Ryangombe resembles Hlakanyana and Galikalangye in the mode of his birth, but without the circumstances preceding it in the latter case} otherwise he differs from all previously mentioned} he overcomes one famous champion and reverses the procedure of Moshanyana by swallowing the second, who cuts his way out and kills him. If correctly reported, this may be a late and corrupt form of the myth.
CHAPTER VII
NATURE MYTHS
N ATURE MYTHS properly so called do not seem to hold a very conspicuous place in African thought, compared with what has been observed elsewhere. True, we have a certain number of stories in which the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies play a part, speaking and acting as human beings — the Nama, indeed, expressly state that they were once men 1 — with others explaining the origin and char- acter of natural phenomena. But, as we have seen, most of the creation-legends content themselves with accounting for man- kind, taking the inorganic world more or less for granted.
The interpretation of myths as figurative descriptions of dawn, sunset, storms, and so forth, which was popularised, about the middle of the last century, by Max Muller and Sir George Cox, has perhaps been unduly discredited, owing to its injudicious and indiscriminate application. It is, however, now recognised that no one key will fit all locks, and that this theory may be valid in some cases though in others completely at variance with the facts. Breysig 2 points out that — at any rate in the most primitive stages of thought — divine or heroic figures are not personifications of natural forces, though, at a much later date, they may, by an afterthought, be identified with them. This seems to have been the case in ancient Babylon, with Marduk, sometimes explained as the sun-god, but also associated with the constellation Taurus, which seems to give us a clue to his real origin. It seems doubtful whether such identification has taken place in that part of Africa with which we are dealing. Those gods of the
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Uganda pantheon who look most like nature powers may equally well be deified ancestral ghosts.
There are some widely current tales which have been ex- plained as disguised Nature myths ; but one is by no means convinced that this is necessarily the case. Thus, one of the most popular episodes in the story of the Hare is that in which he and the Hyena, in time of famine, agree to kill their mothers for food: the Hyena carries out the compact, but the Hare conceals his mother, conveying food to her by stealth, till at last the Hyena gets wind of the trick and kills her. The Ewe have a distinct Nature myth, which Meinhof 3 considers to be a variant — and presumably the oldest form — of the above. The Sun and the Moon each had a number of children and agreed to kill them. No reason is given, beyond the impli- cation that they wanted a feast, nor do we find in the original native account 4 any hint as to the sex of either Sun or Moon. It seems most likely that, for the purposes of the story, they are both regarded as women. The Sun slaughtered her children and ate them, in company with the Moon; the latter, however, hid hers in a large water-jar and only let them out at night. So the Sun to this day is childless, while the Moon’s offspring are visible every night in the shape of the stars.
The same tale is told, by the Somali , 5 of two human mothers, one red and the other black, the former being cheated by the latter. This may, as Meinhof thinks, be a development of the Sun and Moon myth given above, which afterwards reached the Bantu peoples and circulated among them in a variety of forms. (The Kinga attribute it to two men, but the Hare is usually the hero of the tale.) But it is possible that the de- velopment was the other way, and that the typical Bantu ver- sion with its animal protagonists, is the most primitive. Or, again, two or even three, distinct myths may have arisen inde- pendently and reacted on each other.
It has already been pointed out in the third chapter that
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we sometimes find the Moon associated with the introduction of death into the world. In the Hottentot legend, the Moon, though not distinctly said to be the Creator, sends the Hare with the message of immortality to mankind. No genuine Bantu form of the legend assigns this function to the Moon, and it may be distinctly Hamitic, or, as suggested in the pass- age above referred to, derived from the Bushmen. These appear to have regarded the Moon as generally unlucky, 6 for: “ We may not look at the Moon, when we have shot game. . . . Our mothers used to tell us that the Moon is not a good person, if we look at him.” Some kind of “ honey- dew ” found on bushes was supposed to emanate from the Moon, and it is this which “ makes cool the poison with which we shoot the game; and the game arises, it goes on. . . . The Moon’s water is that which cures it.” But it does not ap- pear to be efficacious, unless the hunter has looked at the Moon.
The Bushmen were in the habit of greeting the new moon with the following invocation, covering their eyes with their hands as they uttered it: “ Kabbi-a yonder! Take my face yonder! Thou shalt give me thy face yonder! . . . Thou shalt give me thy face, with which, when thou hast died, thou dost again living return ; when we did not perceive thee, thou dost again lying down come, that I may also resemble thee.”
The Bushmen possess a much greater body of myths dealing with the heavenly bodies than the Bantu. They give two dif- ferent accounts of the Moon. In one, 7 it was originally a hide sandal belonging to that mysterious being the Mantis, who flung it up into the sky on a dark night. In the other, 8 “ the Moon is looked upon as a man who incurs the wrath of the Sun and is consequently pierced by the knife (i.e. rays) of the latter. This process is repeated until almost the whole of the Moon is cut away, and only one little piece left; which the Moon piteously implores the Sun to spare for his children. (The Moon is in Bushman mythology a male being.) From
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this little piece, the Moon gradually grows again and becomes a full moon, when the Sun’s stabbing and cutting processes recommence.”
When the Moon, as we say, a lies on her back,” the Bushmen look on it as the sign of a death: “ it lies hollow, because it is killing itself by carrying people who are dead.” 9
The Moon, when personified at all by the Bantu, is usually spoken of as masculine, and the Evening Star is sometimes said to be the Moon’s wife. The Anyanja 10 say the Moon has two wives, not recognising the Evening and Morning Star as one and the same. Chekechani, the Morning Star, lives in the east and feeds her husband so badly that he pines away, from the day he arrives at her house, till he comes to Puikani, in the west, who feeds him up till he is fat again. Probably this myth exists in more places than have yet been recorded, for we find that the Girvama 11 call “ a planet seen near the Moon,” mkazamwezi , “ the Moon’s wife,” and Bentley 12 says that the corresponding expression, nkaza a ngonde , is used in Kongo for a “ planet — Jupiter or Venus.” The agricultural Bantu would be less likely to pay much attention to the stars — beyond those essential landmarks of the cultivator, the Pleiades and Orion, than the pastoral and hunting peoples. Accordingly they have few names — and those do not seem very certain — for any except the above and the planet Jupiter, which is known everywhere. The Lower Congo people have a little ditty 13 about the three stars in Orion’s belt, which they call u the hunter ” ( Nkongo a mbwa ), “ the dog,” and the nshiji (the rodent known to science as Aulacodus or Thrynomys). It runs somewhat as follows:
“The gun — oh! the gun! —
The hunter is following his dog,
And the dog is after the palm-rat,
And the palm-rat is up a tree,
And the tree is too much for the gun: —
So the gun is hung up again.”
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The star-lore of the Khoikhoi 14 greatly resembles that of the Bushmen. This is not the place to discuss whether they derived it from the latter, or whether it is Hamitic in origin. Hahn says that the Pleiades (Khunusiti), Orion’s Belt (called “the Zebras”), a-Orionis (“the Lion”), and Aldebaran, were known to them before their separation. The Pleiades are the wives of Aldebaran. Once they asked him to go to shoot the three Zebras for them, telling him that he must not come home again till he had done so. He took only one arrow with him, and, having missed the first shot, could not go to pick it up, as the Lion was watching the Zebras on the other side. “ And because his wives had cursed him, he could not return, and there he sat in the cold night, shiver- ing and suffering from thirst and hunger.”
The Pokomo, who call the Pleiades vimia , 15 speak of the male and female vimia , the former being, as pointed out to me at Kulesa in 1912, the stars of Orion’s Belt. It is possible that this is a confusion and that the name originally belonged to the Hyades, of which Aldebaran is the most conspicuous star. The Pokomo are agricultural Bantu, but largely mingled with aboriginal hunting tribes who appear — allowing for differences of environment and circumstances — to have had much in common with the Bushmen.
Certain stars in the Hyades were regarded by the Khoikhoi as the sandals and the cloak of Aldebaran (called Aob , “the Husband”), and two of the smaller stars in Orion were his bow.
The Bushmen called the planet Jupiter, “ Dawn’s Heart.” 18 He had a wife named Kogniuntara, who is now the Lynx. One day, Dawn’s Heart, who had been carrying the baby, hid it under the leaves of a plant thinking that his wife would find it when she was out collecting roots. But before she came, it was discovered by various animals and birds, each in turn offering to act as its mother, but the child refused them all.
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At last came the Hyena, who took offence because the baby would not come to her, and poisoned the “ Bushman rice ” (ants’ larvae — a favourite food) which Kogniuntara was about to collect. The latter, having found her child, took it up and went with her younger sister to look for “ ants’ eggs.” Having found the poisoned supply, she ate some and was be- witched, turning into a lioness. She ran away into the reeds, while the Hyena, assuming her shape, took her place in the home. Her younger sister followed her to the reed-bed en- treating her to feed the child before she left; Kogniuntara’s answer seems to show either that the whole transformation was gradual, or that the mental process did not keep pace with the bodily: “ Thou shalt bring it that it may suck; I would altogether talk to thee while my thinking-strings still stand ” — i.e. while I am still conscious. Twice more the younger sister carried the baby out to the reed-bed to be nursed, the Hyena meanwhile living in the hut unrecognised by the hus- band, but the second time, the mother said: “Thou must not continue to come to me, for I do not any longer feel that I know.” The girl returned home, and that evening, when her brother-in-law asked her to be his partner in the Ku game (in which the women clap their hands rhythmically, while the men nod their heads in time with them), she said, angrily, “ Leave me alone! your wives, the old she-hyenas, may clap their hands for you! ” He at once seized his spear and sprang to stab the Hyena, but missed her and only pierced the place where she had been sitting. In escaping, she stepped in the fire outside the hut, and burnt her foot, wherefore she limps to this day. Next morning, Dawn’s Heart and his sister-in-law went down to the reed-bed, taking a flock of goats with them. The girl told the husband and the other people to stand back, while she stood beside the goats and called her sister. The Lioness leaped out of the reeds, ran towards her sister and then turned aside to the goats, of whom she seized one, whereupon the husband
PLATE XXII
Zulu “ Lightning-Doctors.” They stand on the wall of the cattle-fold, holding shields and specially medicated spears and staves and address “ words of power,” to the storm, that it may pass by their village. After a photograph by Ferneyhough (?) Pietermar- itzburg.
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and the rest took hold of her. They then killed the goats and anointed Kogniuntara with the contents of their stomachs — a favourite African medicine — and then rubbed her till they had removed the hair from her skin. But she asked them to leave the hair on the tips of her ears, “ for I do not feel as if I could hear.” With this exception, she was restored to human form; but, having been bewitched by means of “ Bush- man rice,” she could no longer eat that standing dish and to avoid starvation, turned into a Lynx, which eats meat. (Per- haps we are to understand that the Lynx was a new animal, previously unknown, for which the furry ears formed the starting-point.)
This story explains why the Dawn’s Heart frightens the jackals when he returns home in the early morning, sticking his spear into the ground, and with an arrow ready on his bow- string — “ His eyes were large, as he came walking along, they resembled fires.”
This tale has some interesting points of contact with the Xosa one of T anga-lo-mlibo , 17 which, however, has nothing to do with the stars: the common element being the return of the mother (in this case drowned, not changed into an animal) to nurse her child, and her ultimate recapture by the husband, who drives cattle into the river.
The Milky Way is said by the Bushmen 18 to have been made by a girl belonging to “ the early race,” who threw up some wood-ashes into the sky. She subsequently produced the stars by throwing up some of the edible roots called hum , the old ones, which are red, becoming red stars, the young roots, white stars. The Pokomo in former times thought that the Milky Way was formed by the smoke from the cooking- fires of the “ ancient people ”; in later times, after they had suffered from Somali raids, they called it njia ya Wakatwa, “ the road of the Somali,” because these used to come to them from the north-east. The Wachaga seem to have something
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of the same notion , 19 for they say that, when the Milky Way is clearer than usual, God is warning them of an approaching raid.
The Bushmen held that the Sun and Moon were once human beings and lived on the earth } 20 their presence in the sky is due to the mysterious “ early race,” who “ first inhabited the earth.” The Sun, who did not belong to this race, lived among them, shedding light from under his arm intermit- tently, as he lifted or lowered it, and only on a small space round his own hut. Some children, at the suggestion of their mother, stole up to him while he was asleep and, by a concerted effort, flung him up into the sky, so that he might “ make bright the whole place.” After this, he “became round and never was a man afterwards.”
We do not here get any hint of the Sun and Moon being regarded as man and wife. This view seems to be held by the Nandi 21 and also by the Wachaga , 22 who have a common saying: “ Now,” i.e. at sunset, “the Sun-Chief is handing his shield to his wife.”
These people, who use the name Iruwa (“ Sun ”) for their High God — a conception they may have borrowed from the Masai, as they make a very clear distinction between Iruwa and the ancestral ghosts — certainly seem to associate him with the Sun. Some kind of worship is paid to the latter: at sunrise they spit four times towards the east 23 — this suggests Masai influence — and utter a short prayer: “O Iruwa, protect me and mine! ” The New Moon is greeted in a similar way. Gutmann thinks that these ceremonies are relics of a primitive sun-cultj but it seems more likely that they were adopted from the Masai and superimposed on the Bantu ghost-worship. The greeting of the New Moon is of fairly frequent occur- rence among the Bantu, but there does not seem to be any developed system of moon-worship.
Various legends show us Iruwa endowed with the attributes
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PLATE XX
A bowman of the Southern Bambala. He has just parried with the back of his bow (note the peculiar shape) an arrow shot at him, which is seen flying over his head. After a photograph by E. Torday.
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“Push the Heigeip [Haitsi-aibeb] down!”
“ Push the Ga-gorib down ! ”
till at last Haitsi-aibeb was pushed in. Then he said to the hole: “ Support me a little! ” and it bore him up till he was able to get out again. They chased each other as before, till Haitsi-aibeb fell in again and again got out, but, the third time, it was his adversary who was thrust in, “ and he came not up again.” “ Since that day men breathed freely and had rest from their enemy, because he was vanquished.” Ga-gorib is by some identified with Gaunab, the enemy who wounded Tsui-goab in the knee.
The above story is also told of Tsui-goab , 15 and, what is even more remarkable, of the Jackal . 16 This affords a pre- sumption that Haitsi-aibeb, like other heroes, may originally have been an animal. The Jackal is the favourite hero of Hottentot folklore, and many of his exploits are those attrib- uted by the Bantu to the Hare.
At one time Haitsi-aibeb is said to have made friends with a Lion , 17 and they used to go hunting together. The Lion was the more successful, but Haitsi-aibeb usually contrived to cheat him out of the greater part of the booty, and then derided him behind his back. The Lion’s daughter, to whom he car- ried home his prey, began to suffer from hunger. Haitsi- aibeb also had a daughter, and the two met one day at the water-hole where they had come to fill their vessels. The Lion’s daughter sat down to fill hers , 18 but the other told her to get out of the way and, when she declined, taunted her with her father’s defeat, saying that he had been outwitted by Haitsi-aibeb. The Lion’s daughter, on reaching home, told her father, and he, during the next day’s hunting, took care to keep his spoil to himself. Haitsi-aibeb then said to him: “ These two girls will cause us to quarrel : we had better kill them both! ” The Lion agreed and killed his daughter, but
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Haitsi-aibeb deceived him by beating with a club the skin on which he slept, his daughter being concealed elsewhere. When the Lion discovered the cheat, he pursued them both, but they escaped and took refuge underground. The Lion, in despair, entreated Haitsi-aibeb to restore his daughter to life, which at last he did.
The cairns found in many parts of South Africa were called Haitsi-aibeb’s graves , 19 their number, when remarked on by a traveller, being accounted for by the assertion that he died and returned to life a great many times. That this is not merely an explanation called forth by a leading question seems clear from the legend given by Bleek 20 under the title “ The Raisin- Eater.”
Haitsi-aibeb and his family, on their travels, reached a certain valley, where they found ripe berries, of the kind called “wild raisins,” in great abundance. Haitsi-aibeb ate of them and, becoming very ill, said to his son Uriseb : 21 “ I shall not live, I feel it; thou must, therefore, cover me when I am dead with soft stones. . . . This is the thing I order you to do: — Of the raisin-trees of this valley ye shall not eat. For if ye eat of them, I shall infect you, and ye will surely die in a similar way.” His wife said: “ He is taken ill on account of the raisins of this valley. Let us bury him quickly, and let us go.”
So they bifried him, covering his grave with stones, as directed, and moved on to another place. While preparing to camp here, they heard, in the direction from which they had come, “ a noise as of people eating raisins and singing.” Then the words of the song became audible:
“ I, father of Uriseb,
Father of this unclean one,
I, who had to eat these raisins and died,
And dying live.”
The wife, noticing that the sound seemed to come from the old man’s grave, sent Uriseb to look; and he returned, report-
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ing that he had seen tracks which looked like his father’s foot- marks. So she said: “ It is he alone,” and told Uriseb to creep up to him against the wind and cut off his retreat to the grave, “ and when thou hast caught him, do not let him go.”
“ He did accordingly, and they came between the grave and Haitsi-aibeb who, when he saw this, jumped down from the raisin trees and ran quickly, but was caught at the grave. Then he said: ‘ Let me go! For I am a man who has been dead — - that I may not infect you! ’ But the young wife said: £ Keep hold of the rogue! ’ So they brought him home, and from that day he was fresh and hale! ”
In Hubeane, the power of recovery from death has given place to a marvellous fertility of resource in escaping from it. He is described as the son of Ribimbi (Ribibi, Levivi), the first man , 22 but so far as my information goes, nothing un- usual is related in connection with his birth. He first distin- guished himself by phenomenal stupidity, carrying out liter- ally the directions he received, but always applying them wrongly. Thus one day, he went with his mother to gather beans . 23 She found a small buck asleep among the bean-plants, killed it and put it into her basket, covering it over with the beans as she picked them. She then sent Hubeane home with the basket, telling him, “ If you meet any one who asks what you are carrying, say: 1 My mother’s beans,’ but (you know) in yout- heart (that it) is a bush-buck.” Sure enough, he met a neighbour, who asked what was in the basket. Hu- beane answered: “I am carrying my mother’s beans, but in my heart it is a bush-buck.”
When he grew older, he was set to herd the sheep and goats. One day he came upon a dead zebra, and, when he came home in the evening, being asked where the flock had fed that day, he answered: “ By the black and white rock.” Next day, going to the same place, he found that the hyenas had been at the carcase, and, when asked the same question in the
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evening, said he had driven the sheep to “ the hyenas’ rock.” The men, already puzzled by the “ black and white rock,” could make nothing of this, so some of them went with him next day and found, to their disgust, that they had lost a val- uable supply of meat. So they told him, that when next he found an animal, he must pile a heap of branches over it and come at once to call some people. Next day, he killed a small bird with a stone, covered it with branches and summoned the whole village — of course to their bitter disappointment. One or two took the trouble to explain to him that what he should have done was to tie the bird to his belt and so carry it home, and this, accordingly, he tried to do with a bush-buck which he killed, dragging it along the ground and quite ruin- ing the skin. In short, he was the despair of his relations. His father took to accompanying him, so as to prevent disaster to the sheep, and Hubeane marooned him on the top of a high rock, telling him there was water to be found there, and, once he was up, taking away the pegs which he had driven in for him to ascend. He then ran home and ate the dinner prepared for his father, afterwards secretly filling the pot which had contained it with cowdung, and returning to the rock, helped his father down, pretending that he had only been to look after the sheep. When they reached home, he scolded the servants for being slow in dishing up the food, saying that, if they did not make haste, the meat would be turned into cowdung — which accordingly was found to be the case.
This and similar tricks at length so exasperated his father and the men of the village that they determined to get rid of Hubeane. They put poison into his porridge ; but he insisted on eating from the bowl prepared for his brother ; then they dug a pit in the place where he usually sat, planted sharp stakes in it and covered it over, but he went and sat elsewhere. Then they tied up a man in a bundle of thatching-grass, so that he could stab Hubeane with his spear when he came within
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reach. But again Hubeane was suspicious, and chose the grass for a target when practising javelin-throwing. So, find- ing that they could not catch him napping they decided to leave him alone.
Hlakanyana may originally have been the Hare, or possibly some creature of the weasel kind. The latter is suggested by the introduction to his story given in Callaway , 24 where it is stated that one of his names is Ucaijana, “ Little Weasel,” and “ he is like the weasel ; it is as though he was really of that genus, ... he resembles it in all respects.” But the narrator is clearly somewhat perplexed, and, since we do not find the Weasel otherwise prominent in Zulu folk-lore, it may be a recent substitution for the Hare. He is described by Callaway as a sort of Tom Thumb; but, though his smallness is insisted on in the introduction, it does not appear in the story itself. He is remarkable, however, in other ways. He speaks before he is born, and goes out immediately after to the cattle-kraal, sitting down among the men and eating beef. He plays tricks on his parents and others, but meets with more toleration than Hubeane, as the only hostile manifestation comes from the other boys who (not unnaturally) object to have him sleeping in their hut, though they do not otherwise molest him. After leaving home he has several adventures with cannibals, getting the better of them all in the long run. Except by getting rid of these nuisances — which is quite incidental in his career — he does not appear as a benefactor, unless we are to count a very curious incident which may be an indication of his once having figured as a culture-hero . 25 Having dug up some edible tubers ( umdiandiane ) he gives them to his mother to cook; she eats them herself, and when he demands them back, gives him a milk-pail instead. This he lends to some boys who were milk- ing into broken potsherds; one of them breaks it and, on being remonstrated with, gives him an assagai in exchange. He continues the series of exchanges, each time getting an
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article of greater value than the one lost, till he winds up with a war-assagai, and “ what he did with that, perhaps I may tell you on another occasion.” The two points to notice are, first, that he is actually shown as introducing improvements: the milk-pail instead of potsherds, an assagai for cutting meat instead of sharp-edged slips of cane, an axe for cutting fire- wood, which women were presumably breaking off with their hands, and so on. Secondly, the same story is told, with varia- tions, of the Hare, who, in one place, finds people working with wooden hoes, for which he substitutes an iron one, and again, gives iron arrows for wooden ones.
In Kiziba, we have a more ordinary, human culture-hero in Kibi, a mighty hunter who came out of Unyoro with his dogs , 26 and the somewhat similar figure of Mbega in Usam- bara, 2 ' the founder of the Wakilindi house of chiefs. These may typify the immigration or invasion of a more advanced people. But we must pass over much interesting matter in order to touch on a myth of great interest which is found all over Bantu Africa and beyond its confines to an extent which I have been unable to trace. The hero is often unnamed, but the Basuto call him Moshanyana, or Litaolane. The story is classed by Tylor 28 among Nature Myths and explained as a dramatisation of the recurring phenomena of night and day: the sun swallowed up by the darkness and re-emerging trium- phant and unhurt; or perhaps of the more irregular and catas- trophic disappearance of the sun or moon during an eclipse. More recent observers have doubted whether we do find these phenomena personified in just this way among very primitive races . 29 Without attempting to decide this question, we will tell the story of Moshanyana 30 as a fairly typical specimen.
The people — no doubt all the people of the world, as far as the narrator is concerned — were swallowed up by a monster called Kholumolumo , 31 and not only the people but the cattle, the dogs, and the fowls. The only one who escaped
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was a pregnant woman, who smeared herself over with ashes from the dust-heap, and then went and sat in the calves’ kraal. Kholumolumo came and looked into the kraal, but took her for a stone, “ as she smelt like ashes,” and left her. He went on as far as the mountain pass by which he had reached the village, but was unable to get through it again, after his meal, and remained where he was.
In course of time, the woman’s baby was born, and she left it in order to go a few yards from the hut and fetch some food. When she came back she found a grown man sitting there, clothed, and armed with a spear. She said: “Hello! man! where is my child? ” and he answered: “ It is I, mother! ” He inquired where the people were gone, and she told him they had been eaten by Kholumolumo, as well as the cattle, dogs, and fowls. He asked where the monster was. “ Come out and see, my child.” She climbed with him to the top of the calves’ kraal and pointed to the pass (“ nek ”) which gave entrance to the valley, saying: “ That object which is filling the nek, as big as a mountain, that is Kholumolumo.”
He took his spears and, in spite of his mother’s entreaties, went to look at the monster, stopping by the way to sharpen the spears on a flat stone. When it saw him coming, it opened its mouth to swallow him; but, as it could not rise, he easily kept out of reach of the jaws, went round behind it and stabbed it twice, after which it died.
“ Then he took his knife. A man cried: c Do not cut me! ’ He left and began at another place; a cow said: £ Muu! ’ He left and began at another place; a dog barked: £ Kwee! ’ He left and began at another place. £ Kokolokoloo! ’ cried a hen. This time he persisted and opened the belly of that animal. All the people came out of it, also the cattle.”
They made him their chief; but there were those who were envious and stirred up discontent among the rest. After a while, they planned to kill him, saying: “Let us take hold
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of him, kindle a big fire in the public court and throw him into it.” But “ when they tried to seize him, he escaped them, and they took another man and threw him into the fire.” Perhaps we are to understand that they were subjected, by supernatural means, to some delusion of the senses. “ As for him, he was standing there and said: ‘ What are you doing to that man? 5 ”
They then tried digging a pit at the place where he habit- ually sat, but he escaped, not, like Hubeane, through refusing to sit there, but because he was miraculously prevented from falling in. Again, they tried to throw him over a precipice, but “ he escaped them and they threw down another man,” whom he recalled to life.
When they made their last attempt, he no longer thwarted them, but purposely allowed them to kill him. “ It is said that his heart went out and escaped and became a bird.”
This is a distinct and coherent narrative, some of whose features may have been grafted on to other themes, and it is found elsewhere, with variations ad infinitum. Sometimes the hero escapes death, sometimes though slain he returns to life, sometimes he is left undisturbed and “ happy ever after ” in the enjoyment of his well-deserved honours.
Moshanyana’s rapid development (though his birth is not in itself miraculous) reminds us of Hlakanyana and is also found in other cases. But an interesting Ronga variant 32 attributes an actually abnormal birth to the hero, Bokenyane, whose mother, like the first ancestor of the Nandi, was afflicted with a boil on her shin-bone, from which, when it came to a head, the child issued. It was felt to be fitting that the Hero-deliverer, who accomplished what no human being could even attempt, should not come into the world in the ordinary human way.
Breysig 33 suggests another motive, which probably applies where the hero is also the ancestor of the tribe, viz. the desire to make him the actual starting point of the line, seeing that
PLATE XXI
A Swahili player on the -zomari (clarionet), Zan- zibar. After a photograph by Dr. Aders.
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to give him a human father would merely be carrying the ancestry higher up. This may be the case with some of the heroes we have been considering, though I have not found it stated anywhere except in the case of Hubeane, whose birth, so far as we are told, is not miraculous.
In connection with what was said above as to the hero being originally an animal, we may mention what is probably a very early form of the legend current among the Ne 34 of the Ivory Coast. Here a magic calabash swallows 35 up all men and animals except one ewe, who later on brings forth a ram lamb. When the ram has come to his full strength, he butts the calabash and breaks it.
The miraculous birth occurs in the case of Galikalangye, who has otherwise nothing in common with Moshanyana, ex- cept his repeated escape from death, in which he resembles Hubeane. Here the circumstances preceding the birth are en- tirely different, and also vary in the several versions of the tale, which, however, agree in making the mother promise her child to some being who has helped her out of a difficulty — in this case a Hyena. She has been gathering firewood in the forest and finds herself unable to lift the bundle to her head: the Hyena offers his assistance and asks what she will give him in return, and she replies, with somewhat startling readiness, that she will give him the unborn child. No sooner had she reached her home than he made his appearance and requested her to toast ( kalanga ) him over the fire on a potsherd — hence his name, and he developed with proportional rapidity. When the Hyena came to claim him, the mother told him to take him for himself, and promised to tie a bell round his ankle, so that he could be picked out among the other boys. Galika- langye got hold of a quantity of bells and tied them on to his playmates, instructing them to answer to the same name as himself; so the Hyena retired in perplexity. Next, his mother sent him to pick beans, at a place where the Hyena had hidden
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LEGENDS OF THE SPIRIT-WORLD 207
work. When the child went out to cut grass for the goats, the old woman said to Maruwa, “ You may go with her, but don’t help her — let her do the work.” Maruwa, however, did not act upon this advice, but cut the grass and carried it back, only giving it to the little girl when they were in sight of the house. It was the same when they went to draw water, and to collect firewood, and the child became very fond of Maruwa. One day she said to her: “ You must not stay here too long; once you have got used to the place, they will begin to ill-use you. Go and tell the old woman you are homesick, and ask her to let you go. If she says: { Shall I let you go through the manure or through the burning? ’ say: 1 Please let me go through the manure, mother! ’ ” Maruwa did as she was directed and was thrown into the manure pit in the cow- stall. When she got out she found herself in the upper world again, not only quite clean, but covered with metal chains and bead ornaments. She reached her parents’ house and, finding no one at home, hid herself in the compartment of the cattle. Her mother came, after a while, to fetch the milk-calabash, saw and recognised her, and stretched out her arm to touch her ; but Maruwa cried: “ Don’t touch my ornaments! ” The woman ran and called her husband, “ He! Mbonyo! Mbonyo! ” and asked him to fetch the milk-calabash from the cow-stall — an unusual thing for a man, which he was at first unwilling to do. Suspecting, hovever, that her request had some particular meaning, he went and found Maruwa who warned him also not to touch her or her ornaments. 20 He understood, or at least supposed, that she had some serious reason for keeping him at a distance; he went at once, in great joy, to fetch a sheep, which he presented to her, “ as a gift of welcome, so that she might come out and he could ad- mire her properly in the courtyard. So, when Maruwa had been greeted with the sheep she came out into the yard in all her ornaments which she had acquired in the
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Kiningo pool. The people came to look at her, and all of them wondered.”
A neighbour’s daughter was envious and, hearing where Maruwa had got all these things, ran to the Kiningo pool and threw herself in. She ate the food offered her, and, when received into the old woman’s house, followed her instructions to the letter and left the little girl to do all the work. The latter, therefore, said to her one day: K We are very hard up here; you had better ask the old woman to let you go home.” She then exactly reversed the advice she had given to Maruwa with the result that the old woman threw her into the fire, as requested. When she arrived in the upper world “ fire was hidden in her body.” She went home and hid in the cow-stall, as Maruwa had done. Maruwa was the first person to see her and held out her hand to her, but immediately fire burst from the girl’s whole body. She ran away, plunging into stream after stream, but could not extinguish the flames. She cried to every river she passed to help her, but not one would do so. At last she came to Namuru and died in the Ser*e stream; so no one who knows the story drinks of its water to this day.
A Spider story from the Gold Coast 21 is related to this group of tales and may as well have a place here.
Once in a time of scarcity, Anansi or Ananu (the Spider) and his son Ananute, were looking for food in the bush, when the son found one palm-nut. Just as he was going to crack and eat it, it slipped from his fingers and rolled into a rat-hole. He crawled in after it and soon found himself in the presence of three very dirty spirits, one black, one red, and one white, who had neither washed nor shaved since the creation of the world. They asked what he wanted and were much surprised to hear that he had been taking so much trouble for the sake of a single palm-nut. They dug up some yams from their garden and gave them to him, telling him to peel them and
LEGENDS OF THE SPIRIT-WORLD 209
cook the peelings and throw away the good part. He did so and found that they became very fine yams. He remained there for three days, getting plenty to eat, and became quite fat. On the fourth he took his leave, asking if he might carry back a few yams to his relations. The spirits gave him a large basket full, came with him part of the way, and taught him the following song:
(Solo)
<c White spirit, ho! ho!
Red spirit, ho! ho!
Black spirit, ho! ho!
(Chorus)
Should my head disobey,
What would befall me?
The head he throws away —
The foot he throws away —
You, you offended the great fetishes! ” 22
This they said, he must not tell to anyone, or even sing it when by himself. Great was the rejoicing when he reached home, laden with supplies, which lasted the family for some time. When they were exhausted, he returned to fetch some morej and, as he was careful to obey the spirits’ instructions, they allowed him to come again as often as he wished. His father’s curiosity was aroused and he wished to come too, but his son — not unreasonably, when one remembers Anansi’s character — would not hear of it. So next time yams were wanted, Anansi got up overnight, made a hole in his son’s bag and filled it with ashes. This enabled him to follow his track and come up with him before he had reached hi's desti- nation. The young Spider, seeing that he was determined, handed over the errand to him, with some well-meant hints as to his behaviour, and went home. Needless to say, he made a very bad impression. He burst out laughing when he caught sight of the spirits, remarked on their unwashed condition
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and offered to trim their beards for them. He then had the impudence to ask for yams, was given some and told to peel them and throw away the yams themselves, but said to himself that he was not going to be such a fool, and put the yams into the pot. He found, after waiting long past the usual time, that they were not done, nor likely to be, so he had to try the skins, which, as before, became very fine tubers. When he set out for home, the spirits taught him their secret song, and he began to sing it at the top of his voice, as soon as he was out of sight. Then “ he burst from above, and broke down, then his head was cut off, and he also died, but still he went on singing! ” The spirits, unwilling to proceed to extremities, restored him to life, but he repeated the offence a second and a third time, till at last they came after him, took away his yams and gave him a good thrashing. And his neighbours, when they heard what had happened, expelled him from the village.
There is one more group of legends which must be mentioned — that in which a murder is made known and avenged by means of a bird or other creature, which is usually, though not always, identified with the soul of the victim. There are a very large number of va- riants, one of the finest being the Zulu “ Unyengebule ,” 23 where a man kills his wife in a fit of irritation, and the plume of feathers which she was wearing in her hair turns into a bird. He kills the bird again and again, but it keeps coming to life and at last reveals the story to the murdered woman’s parents. But a less well-known and less generally accessible form of the story is current among the Kinga people at the north end of Lake Nyasa ." 4 It is called “ The Heron’s Feather,” and relates how two youths went on a visit to their relations at a distant village. One of them wore a crow’s feather in his hair, the other a heron’s. They saw some girls on a hillside and shouted across the valley to them : “ Maidens, which of us two do you prefer? ” The girls answered: “ We
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like the one with the crow’s feather best.” The same thing happened a second and a third time, and the young man who had failed to attract admiration suggested to his companion that they should change feathers, and he agreed. When they had crossed the next hill, they met another band of girls and re- peated their question, but the answer was, now, “ The one with the heron’s feather is the handsomest.” The other remarked, “ Kwo! they all despise me — I alone am the ugly one, for they all like you, and I shall never get a wife! ” and jealousy rankled in his heart. After a while, they came to a dry water- course in a deep ravine, and he suggested to his friend that they should dig a pit to try and get some water. The other agreed, and they dug for some time. When the pit was about a man’s height in depth, the envious youth snatched the other’s plume and threw it in, telling him to climb down and fetch it. He did so, and his false friend, seeing that the pit was deep enough, threw the earth in and buried him. He then went on to his relatives’ village and told them, in answer to their en- quiries, that he had come alone. He remained with them for some time and then went home. When he arrived, he was asked where his friend was and answered: u Oh! I don’t know, he stayed behind ; I suppose he is on his way.” Next day, the lad’s parents enquired again and received the same answer, which satisfied them for the time, but when he did not come that evening or the following morning, they grew anxious. Presently they noticed a bird sitting on the kraal fence and singing: “ Your son is not there; they blamed him for wearing the heron’s feather and buried him in the swamp.” When they heard this, they asked again: “ Where did you leave your friend? ” but the young man insisted that he had only lin- gered behind and would most likely come next day. Appar- ently they were not quite certain they had understood the bird, or were reluctant to apply its message to themselves, for they accepted his assurance and waited another day. The lad did
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not come back, but the bird did and sang the same words again. When he assured them once more that the missing one was on the way, they asked: “ Well, then, what is that bird singing? ” “ Oh ! ” he answered, “ I don’t know, I expect he is drunk and singing some nonsense to himself, that is all! ” Another day passed, and once more the bird came back, and this time the father and mother insisted on going to find out what had hap- pened. They met people who had seen both lads go into the ravine but only one come out. They went on to the swamp and the mother remarked that the earth had recently been dis- turbed, so they dug down and found the body. They seized the murderer, dug another pit, threw him in and buried him.
Nothing is said here as to the identity of the bird, but we may be sure that, originally at least, it was the form assumed by the murdered lad’s soul. How completely this idea has sometimes been lost sight of, is seen in a Mbundu story , 25 where Mutilembe, envious of his younger brother’s success in hunting, kills him, the murder being reported by the two dogs, who witness it. He kills them both, as Unyengebule does the bird, but they return to life — a reminiscence of the idea that the accusing animal was the reincarnated (and indestructible) soul.
CHAPTER VI
HEROES
T HE FIGURE of the Hero who is also the Demiurge, the institutor of the arts of life and, in another aspect, the “ trickster-transformer,” 1 is not very frequently met with in Africa, at least as far as our knowledge goes. However, we do, here and there, meet with traces of such a being, usually of a confused and fragmentary character. Hubeane (Ho- byana) 2 of the Bavenda and Bapedi, said to be the son of the first man and the creator of other human beings (others call him the first ancestor of the race and the creator of heaven and earth), possesses many characteristics of the trickster. These appear very clearly in the Zulu Hlakanyana , 3 who also possesses magical powers of transformation, but does not seem to be credited with any share in the making of the world. In the present form of the tale, he is a human, or quasi-human be- ing j but there are indications that he may be of animal origin, and some of his adventures are attributed to the Hare in Bantu folklore. The Hare never appears as a Demiurge ; but the Spider, the arch-trickster of Western Africa, figures in the creation-legend of the Yaos , 4 and is connected with heaven in Angola , 5 by the Kongo people and by the Duala . 6 There are some miraculous circumstances about the birth of Hlakanyana, which he shares with Ryang’ombe, a hero of Kiziba : 7 both speak before they are born, and the latter eats a whole ox im- mediately after. Hubeane exhibits a mixture of cunning and real or assumed stupidity which recalls the Teutonic Tyll Owl- glass and the Turkish Nasr-ed-din; his cunning is shown in the tricks played on others, but chiefly in his avoidance of the
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traps set for him after people have become convinced that he is too clever to be tolerated in the tribe.
This latter set of episodes is repeated in the story of Gali- kalangye , 8 found among the Wahehe, north of Lake Nyasa, among the Anyanja and Yaos farther south, and probably else- where. Here, the hero’s mother promises, before his birth, to hand him over to a demon } 9 but it proves impossible to fulfil the bargain, as he can never be taken unawares. Some of the devices are the same as those employed against Hubeane; but all his stratagems are measures of self-defence — he plays no malicious tricks.
We have already mentioned Tsui-goab, the “ Wounded- Knee ” chief, as a hero of the Hottentots, in process of deifi- cation, if not actually deified. This being may or may not be, as Hahn thinks, identical with Haitsi-aibeb} 10 if not, the latter must be set down as a distinct hero, about whom various legends have been preserved} though, unfortunately, it is now, apparently, too late to recover the connecting links between the records of isolated observers . 11
Haitsi-aibeb’s birth was miraculous } 12 and he was able to transform himself into various shapes. He fights with an enemy of mankind, Gaunab, or Ga-gorib , 13 the “ Thruster- down,” whose custom was to throw people headlong into a deep pit. He used to sit beside this pit and challenge those who passed to throw a stone at his forehead} but the stone rebounded, killing the thrower, so that he fell into the hole. At last Haitsi-aibeb was told that many men had been killed in this way and he went to the spot. He declined Ga-gorib’s challenge, but presently drew off his attention and aimed a stone at him, which hit him under the ear, “ so that he died and fell into his own hole. After that there was peace, and people lived happily.”
Another version 14 represents the two chasing each other round and round the hole, crying alternately:
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The ancestors were delighted with her singing, and asked her to repeat it. They then (apparently without further question- ing, but perhaps we are to take the dialogue for granted) gave her supplies of all sorts of provisions and called their children to carry the loads as far as the edge of the wood, whe're the people were waiting and transported them to the village. Then all the women had their hands restored to them. Sabu- lana returned to the place where the ghosts were seated, and they said to her: “ Go and tell your people that they have sinned in that they tilled the ground and reaped the harvest without paying us any honour. But now let them come with their; baskets and bags and each one take away as much as he can carry on his head ; for now we are glad that they have come back once more to pray to us. . . . We were angry with our children, because they ate but brought no offerings. Who, think you, prevented the maize from growing? It was be- cause you sinned over and over again.”
In return for Sabulana’s services, she and her mother were made chiefs over the whole country.
A different and very curious conception of the spirit-world is found in the Zulu tale of Unanana Bosele* Two children and afterwards their mother were swallowed by an elephant. “ When she reached the elephant’s stomach, she saw large forests and great rivers, and many high lands; on one side there were many rocks; and there were many people who had built their villages there; and many dogs and many cattle; all was there inside the elephant; she saw, too, her own children sitting there.”
In short, as Tylor points out , 8 it is a description of the Zulu Hades. It also belongs, with a difference, to another group of tales which we shall have to study in some detail later; on — that in which people and animals are swallowed, and subse- quently disgorged by a monster. But instead of being released by a deliverer from outside, the woman cuts her way out of the
PLATE XVIII
Hut built for the accommodation of the spirits, Rabai Mpia, near Mombasa. After a photograph by Rev. K. St. Aubyn Rogers.
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elephant after feeding, with her children, on his internal or- gans. The children having told her, in answer to her ques- tions, that they had eaten nothing until she came — “ she said: ‘Why did you not roast this flesh? ’ They said: ‘ If we eat this beast, will it not kill us? ’ She said: ‘ No; it will itself die j you will not die! ’ She kindled a great fire. She cut the liver and roasted it and ate with her children. They cut also the flesh and roasted and ate. All the people which were there wondered saying: ‘ O, forsooth, are they eating, whilst we have remained without eating anything? ’ The woman said: ‘Yes, yes, the elephant can be eaten.’ All the people cut and ate.”
This somewhat repulsive incident is quoted at length because it recurs more than once, among the animal stories, and will be noticed in that connection. The result is pretty much what might have been expected.
“ The elephant told the other beasts, saying: ‘ From the time I swallowed the woman, I have been ill 5 there has been pain in my stomach! ’ ” (In another version it is stated that the elephant’s groans, when slices were being cut from his liver, were so appalling that all the animals, feeding in differ- ent parts of the forest, came running to see what was the matter.) “The other animals said: ‘ It may be, O Chief, it arises because there are now so many people in your stomach! ’ And it came to pass, after a long time, that the elephant died. The woman divided the elephant with a knife, cutting through a rib with an axe. A cow came out and said: ‘ Moo, Moo, we at length see the country.’ They made the woman presents, some gave her cattle, some goats and some sheep. She set out with her children, being very rich.”
The conception of the dead dwelling underground is illus- trated in the traditions, already mentioned, of Umkatshana and Uncama, and also in the tale of Untombi-yapansi. 6 Un- tombi-yapansi was the daughter of a chief, who also had a son,
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Usilwane, and another daughter, Usilwanekazana. Usilwane appears to have practised evil magic, though the narrator does not expressly say so. On one occasion he returned from the hunt, bringing with him a leopard cub. He said: “This is my dog, give it milk; mix it with boiled corn and make por- ridge; and give it its food cold that it may eat; for it will die if you give it hot.” His instructions were carried out, and the leopard throve and grew big, to the terror of the people, who said: “It will devour the people. Usilwane will become an umtakati (wizard). Why does he domesticate a leopard and call it his dog? ” 7 His favourite sister, Usilwanekazana, was greatly troubled on his account; so, one day, when she hap- pened to be alone at home, she gave the leopard hot food, and he died. When her brother returned he was very angry and stabbed her, not, apparently in the heat of passion, but in a cold-blooded and deliberate way which, with his subsequent proceedings, tends to suggest that the people’s suspicions were not unfounded. He collected his sister’s blood in a pot, and, after washing her wound and laying her out as if she were asleep, killed a sheep and cooked part of it with her blood. When his second sister came home, he offered her some of this food, and she was just about to eat it, but was warned by a fly which came buzzing noisily, again and again, “ Bu ! bu! give me and I will tell you.” After vainly trying to drive it away, she gave it some food, and it told her what had happened.
She uncovered her sister’s body, gave one look and rushed off to tell her parents. Usilwane pursued her with his spear and had nearly overtaken her, when, seeing no escape, she cried: “ Open, earth, that I may enter, for I am about to die this day! ” 8 The earth opened and swallowed her up, and Usil- wane, utterly bewildered, went back again. Untombi-yapansi went on her way underground till evening, but nothing is said as to what she saw there; then she slept and started again next morning. At midday, she came out of the earth and,
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standing on a mound which overlooked her father’s garden cried aloud: “ There will be nothing but weeping this summer. Usilwanekazana has been killed by Usilwane; he says she killed the prince’s leopard without cause.” An old woman who heard her repeated the words, and the chief ordered her to be killed “ for prophesying evil against the king’s child.” The same thing happened again next day, and this time an unfor- tunate old man who had heard the cry was sacrificed. But on the third day, all the people heard the girl’s voice and ran towards her, asking “ What do you say? ” She told them, and they went to Usil wane’s house, seized him and took him before the chief, asking what was to be done with him. The father, overwhelmed with grief, shame and despair, ordered them to close the doors — himself, his wife and his son being within — and set fire to the house. His daughter would seem to have ac- companied the men, for he now turned to her and said, “ You, Untombi-yapansi, go to your sister” — a married one not previously mentioned — “ and live with her, for I and your mother shall be burnt with the house, for we do not wish to live, because Usilwanekazana is dead, and we too will die with her. . . . Take our ox, mount it and go. When you are on the top of the hill, you will hear the great roaring of the burn- ing village ; do not look back, but go on.”
On the way to her sister’ls kraal, she met with an imbuiu — described as a large lizar.d, but evidently able to assume a wholly or partly human form, which induced her, by a suc- cession of tricks, to let it wear her clothes and ride on her ox . 9 They arrived at the village, where the imbuiu was received as the chief’s daughter and Untombi-yapansi, now called “Dog’s tail” ( Umsilawezinja ), was supposed to be her ser- vant and set to scare birds in the gardens. The girl who went with her was surprised to find that she got rid of the birds by merely singing — no doubt a magic song, though this is not stated, and the words, as given, would not seem to have any
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occult force. At noon, she left her companion, saying that she was going to bathe in the river. When she came out of the water, “ with her whole body shining like brass ” (this is supposed to be her usual appearance, but she had disguised it by smearing herself with earth), she struck the ground with a brass rod, saying, “ Come out all ye people of my father and cattle of my father, and my food! ” Immediately the earth opened, and many people, including her dead parents and sister, came out, bringing with them many cattle, also food for her, which she ate. Her own ox also came out (so that all who appeared were not necessarily dead) ; she mounted it and sang a song which all the people took up; she then dis- mounted, struck the ground again, caused the people and cattle to descend into it, and returned to the garden. Next day, her companion, whose curiosity had been aroused, followed her stealthily and saw what happened. She told the chief, who hid himself in the bushes near the river and watched her perform- ing her incantations. The imbulu was then exposed and de- stroyed; and the chief married Untombi-yapansi in addition to her sister, after which “ they all lived together happily.” We are not told that the parents returned to life again after the brief apparitions above recorded — no doubt it was felt that, once their daughter’s identity was established and she was settled in a home of her own, their intervention was no longer needed. It seems clear that they are imagined as living under- ground in very much the same way as they did on the surface of the earth, also that living people and animals can enter their abode and leave it without much difficulty.
In our first chapter, we have already mentioned some Afri- can analogues to the tale of which perhaps the best-known European type is Grimm’s a Frau Holle.” 10 This has a dis- tinct mythological background, quite lost sight of in the Eng- lish variant, where the ancient goddess Holda or Hulda 11 has become an unnamed “ old witch,” and the girl, instead of fall-
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ing into the well, leaves her parents’ house in order; to look for a situation. The older version does not expressly say that she is drowned, but one can hardly doubt that she is supposed to have entered the realm of the dead and to have returned to life when dismissed through the golden gateway. The African variants can scarcely be separated from those already mentioned, where the oppressed or afflicted seek a remedy for their troubles in heaven above.
Of these there are several types. The heroine may be an ill-used step-daughter, whose step-mother is looking for a pretext to get rid of her, 12 a child fearing her parent’s anger on account of some accident, or one of two or more wives, 13 suffering from the jealousy of her rivals. It is perhaps worth noting that, while the jealous co-wife figures pretty frequently in folk-tales, the cruel step-mother is not so common: in gen- eral, it is assumed that the children of a polygamous household will be as well treated by one mother as another, just as we assume that, as a normal thing, brothers and sisters will live together in harmony. The two step-mother stories I have noted as belonging to this group, come from West Africa. They also differ from the rest in more or less losing sight of the spirit-world idea. In the one (Hausa), the step-mother sends the girl to the “ River Bagajun,” reputed to be the abode of cannibal witches, in the hope that she will never return} in the other (Temne), she is despatched on an errand to “ the Devil ” — probably, in an earlier form of the story, to the other world, though of this there is no indication as it now stands, and the K Devil ” (the tale is told in Sierra Leone Eng- lish, and the expression is obviously imported) might be a forest demon. Perhaps he was originally an ancestral ghost haunting a grove: in that case the link with the spirit- world is obvious, though it is not located under the earth.
There is a very curious variation in another Hausa tale, 14 the first part of which (like the opening of a Chwana “ Holle ”
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story) 15 belongs to the class of “ Ogre tales.” A mother, whose daughter has been killed and eaten by a were-hyena, gathers up her bones and sets out with them for the town “ where they mend men.” On the way, she meets with various adventures through all of which she passes satisfactorily j when she arrives she behaves with courtesy and obeys the instructions given her, and her daughter is restored alive and well. Her co-wife, thinking that her own ugly daughter will be improved by the same process, purposely kills her and starts, carrying the bones 5 but she behaves exactly like the favoured but ill- conditioned child in “ Frau Holle,” and is fitly rewarded by receiving her daughter back “ badly mended ” — in fact, only half a girl, with one eye, one arm, and one leg. This same idea, strangely enough, recurs on the opposite side of Africa, where, in a Chaga tale already referred to, 16 the woman who has tricked her rival into drowning her baby and finds that she has got it back more beautiful than before, drowns her own child on purpose and gets it back with one arm and one leg. The notion of these one-sided beings seems to prevail through- out Africa — we shall have to come back to it later on, but these are the only instances known to me where it occurs in this particular connection.
In the most typical forms of this story, the girl meets with various adventures en route , usually to the number of three (as, with us, the corn, the cow, and the apple-tree). These are taken as tests of character, showing the first girl in a credit- able, and the second in an odious light. Sometimes a service is required — in some cases of a repulsive nature, as when an old woman suffering from skin-disease asks to have her sores washed, or still worse, her eyes cleansed by licking out the puru- lent matter, in others, merely involving a little trouble. Some- times, as in the “ Route du Ciel,” it is the girls’ treatment of those who direct them on their way, that is decisive; so, in “ The Devil’s Magic Eggs ” (Temne), the first one gives civil
LEGENDS OF THE SPIRIT-WORLD 20 5
and respectful answers to the talking hoe-handles and the one- eyed man. The Hausa “ How the ill-treated Maiden became rich” has a test of self-control in place of the tasks: the road leads past a river of sour milk, a river of honey and some fowls roasting themselves — all of which call out an invitation. The first girl, intent on her errand, says: “ No, no, what is the use? ” and passes on; the second rudely replies, “You are full of impudence, must I wait for you to ask me to take some? ” Sometimes these tests or tasks are dispensed with till the girl has arrived, when she is either given some definite thing to do (the witch asks the Hausa girl to wash her, the “ Devil ” tells the Temne “ Pickin ” to relieve his head of its inhabitants) or set to work for a lengthened period, as is done by Frau Holle. Further, on leaving, there is usually either a choice of gifts, or a choice of means of exit. The Temne Devil tells the girls to help themselves to four eggs; the first takes the small ones, which, on being broken produce riches of all sorts; her sister chooses the largest, and finds them to contain bees, a snake, a whip, and fire, which consumes her wicked mother and herself. The Hausa witch gives each of the girls a basket, with directions when to open it — directions followed by the one and disregarded by the other, with re- sults much as in the Temne tale.
In a Chaga variant, 17 the old woman asks, “ Shall I strike you with the hot or with the cold? ” The principle of this choice is not explained; but “ the cold” is evidently the right answer. The girl who gives it is told to thrust her arms into a pot and draws them out covered with bangles. It should also be noticed that in two cases the successful candidate, if we may call her so, refuses the food offered by the spirits. This is a familiar incident in other mythologies, but it is sometimes curiously lost sight of — e.g., in the Iramba story mentioned in our last chapter. 18 As a specimen of these stories — none, so far as I can discover, unites all the features I have mentioned
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— we may take that of “ Maruwa,” current among the Wachaga. 19
Maruwa and her little sister were set to watch the garden when the beans were ripening. One hot afternoon, Maruwa, being very thirsty, went down to the Kiningo pool to get a drink. The little girl, left alone, saw a great troop of baboons among the bean-plants, but she was afraid to drive them off by herself} and when Maruwa returned she found that the whole crop was gone. She was terribly frightened, thinking that her father would beat her, so she ran down to the pool and jumped in. Her sister ran home and told their mother, who came down to the pool and found that Maruwa had not yet sunk, but was still floating on the water. She called:
“ Ho! Maruwa, are you not coming back?
Are you not coming back again?
Never mind the beans, we will plant some more!
Never mind the beans, we will plant some more.”
Maruwa answered:
“Not I! not I!
The baboons came and ate the beans — he\
The monkeys came and ate the beans ” —
i.e. “ they have stripped the garden quite bare, and I dare not go back.” The mother sang again and the girl answered in the same words, and then sank. Her mother went home.
When Maruwa reached the bottom of the pool she found many people living there, in houses much like those she had left in her own village. They offered her food, but she refused everything. Wanting to know what they could give her, they asked: “What do you eat at home? ” — and she, trying to think of something unprocurable here, answered, “ Bitter fruit and emetic leaves! ” She remained with them many days, eating nothing all the time, and living in the house of an old woman, who had a little girl to help her with the
PLATE XIX
1. View on Lake Kivu, in the volcanic region of Ruanda.
2. The Virunga Volcanoes, believed to be the abode of the Dead.
After photographs by Captain Philipps.
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haunted woods of Kolelo, where “ on some days the drums sound, and you hear shrill cries like those raised by women at a wedding.” Certain open glades in this forest, where the ground is smooth and covered with white sand, “ just as if people had gone there to sweep it,” are the places where the ghosts assemble. 27 The spirit-drums and other instruments (horns and flutes) are also heard in Nyasaland 28 and in the Delagoa Bay region, where people even profess to have heard the words of their songs. Here the invisible performers would stop when the traveller tried to catch sight of them, and the music would begin again just behind him. 29
M. Junod finds that Thonga ideas as to the abode of the ghosts are “ very confused, even contradictory.” Some hold to the notion of an Underworld — “a great village under the earth, where everything is white (or pure) 5 30 there they till the fields, reap great harvests and live in abundance, and they take of this abundance to give to their descendants on the earth. They have also a great many cattle.” This may not seem com- patible with the need for frequent offerings, but the Thonga do not take the Chaga view that these are actually necessary to keep the spirits in existence. “ The gods do not ask for real food or wealth; they only consider the mhamba (offering) as a token of love from their descendants and as a sign that these have not forgotten them, but will do their duty towards them.” 31
Others think that the dead somehow continue to exist in the grave, which is thought of as their house, and others, again, that they live in the “ sacred woods ” (equivalent to the Chaga “ clan groves ”) in much the same way as they did on earth. They “lead their family life under a human form, parents and children, even little children, who are carried on their mothers’ shoulders.” They sometimes appear to the liv- ing in this way, though not very frequently nowadays; 32 formerly they were often seen “ marching in file, going to
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draw water from the well. They had their own road. They were short of stature, the women carrying babies in the ntehe (prepared goat-skin), but, strange to say, head downwards.”
These sacred groves are really ancient burial-places — among the Thonga, of the chiefs only — elsewhere, as, I think, in Nyasaland , 33 of people generally. Here one sees, dotted about the country, groves consisting of large and shady trees (they are carefully protected from bush fires), among which are the graves. Unless these are of recent date, there is nothing to distinguish them, except some earthen pots, whole or broken. These groves are avoided, as might be expected, by the natives; but I never heard of any special beliefs or tra- ditions connected with them.
The Thonga groves are tabu to all except the “ guardian of the wood,” or priest, who is the descendant of the chiefs buried there and has charge of all the arrangement's for sacrificing to and propitiating them. Terrible things have happened to unauthorised persons trespassing there. One woman who plucked a sola fruit 34 and cracked it against a tree-trunk, found it full of little vipers which addressed her as follows: “ Go on, eat away! Haven’t we seen you every day picking 3 ala} And these sala are ours and not yours. What shall we gods have to eat? Have we not made this tree to grow? ” “ And she went home and died, because she had been cursed by the gods.” 35
The same fate — one cannot but think most undeservedly — befell another woman, who found, as she thought, a small child picking berries in a tree and carried him home on her back, as he seemed to be lost. But when she reached her hut and wanted to put him down to get warm by the fire, he could not be removed from her back. The neighbours came to the conclusion that he was no child, but a spirit, and sent for a diviner, who “ threw the bones ” and “ at once knew what was wrong,” but failed to get him off. So they suggested that she should carry him back where she had found him. The guard-
PLATE XVII
The Ghost-Baby
hHMBNBHBHb
THE ANCESTRAL SPIRITS 19 1
ian of the forest, after a severe rebuke to the poor woman, sacrificed a white hen on her behalf, and interceded for her with the offended powers. “ She did not do it on purpose. She thought it was a child j she did not know it was a god.” While this sacrifice was being offered, the being suddenly “ left her back, disappeared, and no one knew how or whither he went. As for the woman, she trembled violently and died.”
This story offers no encouragement to those who would befriend waifs and strays.
Other legends tell what happened to people who cut wood, or killed snakes in the sacred places, or built their huts too near them. The old priest in charge of the Libombo forest was struck down, seemingly by apoplexy, when he went to see what was being done with a certain tree obstructing a road which was being made by the Portuguese authorities. His own account of the matter was, “ The gods came to me, saying: 1 What are you doing here? You ought to have stayed at home! 1 I fell backward unconscious and remained in that state for four days. I could not eat; they had closed my mouth. I could not speak! My people picked me up and carried me home.” He recovered after a sacrifice had been offered by his eldest son; but the gods were not entirely placated till after further cere- monies, and he carefully refrained from using the Portuguese road in future. 36
From Kiziba, 37 on the western side of Lake Victoria, comes a tale connecting the sacred groves, in a somewhat unexpected way, with the tailed Heaven-dwellers. A certain man married a strange woman whom he met on the road as she walked alone, carrying a royal drum. (This circumstance is not fur- ther explained.) She told him not on any account to enter the Spirits’ Wood, and, of course, he did so. There he met with people — no doubt the ancestors — who, whether out of impish mischief, or in order to bring about the punishment for his disobedience, informed him that his wife had a tail; and
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he could not rest till he had convinced himself that such was indeed the case. She then disappeared, never to return; but a voice from the haunted wood pointed the moral: “ You listened to injurious reports against your neighbor and wanted to see the matter with your own eyes.” This belongs to the familiar class of “Vanishing Wife” stories; but it contains some unusual features.
Nearly everywhere we find the belief that the dead some- times come back in the form of animals. There does not seem to be any idea of permanent reincarnation, only of occasional appearances, so that this does not constitute a distinct category of spirits — the animals may be supposed to come up from the Underworld, or out of the grave, or show themselves in the sacred woods, like the old chief of Libombo, 38 who appeared to his descendant, the sacrificing priest, in the shape of a green puff-adder. “ I myself,” said Nkolele, the priest in question, “ went into the wood with the offering I had prepared for the gods, and then it came out. It was a snake . . . the Master of the Forest, Mombo-wa-Ndlopfu (Elephant’s Face). He came out and circled round all those present. The women rushed away terrified. But he had only come to thank us. He didn’t come to bite us. He thanked us, saying: 1 Thank you! thank you! So you are still there, my children! You came to load me with presents and to bring me fruit. It is well! ’ ... It was an enormous viper, as thick as my leg down there ” — at the ankle. “ It came close up to me and kept quite still, never biting me. I looked at it. It said: ‘Thank you! So you are still there, my grandson! ’ ”
Nkolele then made his prayer, which he gives at length. He may have meant that the snake’s look and movement con- veyed to his mind the impression of the above words; but I am inclined to think, considering the quite genuine subjective experiences of some European children, that he fully believed he had heard it speaking. A friend of my own told me that,
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at the age of eight or nine, she was addressed by a cockchafer in a French garden. He said: “Petite fille, ecoute! ” but though she listened attentively, she heard no more; her imagi- nation, she supposed, had not been lively enough to supply the matter of his discourse.
The serpent-shape is the one most frequently chosen by the ghosts — perhaps for the reason suggested by Wundt , 39 that these reptiles are associated in the native mind with the mag- gots found in decomposing corpses, and are supposed, e.g. in Madagascar, to be the form assumed by the soul on escaping from the body, a notion easily transferred, where classification is not very scientific, to all creeping things. But Madagascar is rather Indonesian than African in character, and I do not know that this particular belief is found anywhere in Africa itself. It seems simpler to take the view that any animal seen on or near a grave might easily be accepted as a new embodi- ment of the dead man, especially if, as a snake may sometimes do, it actually crawls out from the earth of the grave itself. One of Callaway’s native informants says: “ If he observe a snake on the grave, the man who went to look at the grave says on his return, ‘ O, I have seen him to-day, basking in the sun on the top of the grave ! ’ ” 40
The Zulus say that only certain kinds of snakes are ama- dhlozi. Some, including at least four poisonous kinds, “ are known to be mere beasts: it is impossible for them ever to be men . . . they are always beasts.” 41 (One of these is the puff-adder, which, we have seen, the Thonga of Libombo rec- ognise as a spirit-snake, but it may be another species.) Of those which can “ become men,” some, but not all, are harm- less; but not every individual of these species is necessarily an ancestor. Those which are, may be known by their behaviour when they enter a hut — and the fact that they do so at all is presumptive evidence of their character; they do not eat frogs or mice; they remain quiet until discovered, and are not afraid
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of men, “ neither does a snake that is an itongo excite fear in men . . . but there is a happy feeling, and it is felt that the chief of the village has come.” On the other hand, “ A mere snake, when it comes into a hut looks from side to side and is afraid of men: and it is killed, because it is known to be a wild snake.” The “ human ” snakes, being fed and never molested, become tame — which may account for the behaviour of the puff-adder which was Mombo-wa-Ndlopfu. On the other hand, the Yao appear to think that when the dead come back as snakes, it is with the distinct intention of annoying the liv- ing — hence they may be killed without scruple, to stop the nuisance . 42 If a Zulu, in ignorance, kills an itongo-mskt, it comes back in a dr, earn to complain, and “ a sin-offering is sacrificed.” 43
Other creatures serving as the embodiments or vehicles of departed spirits are the mantis , 44 some lizards (one kind es- pecially said to be the amatongo of old women), lions, leopards, hyenas (these are deceased wizards), etc . 45
CHAPTER V
LEGENDS OF THE SPIRIT-WORLD
A LMOST identical tales are told, as we have already had occasion to remark, about people who have ascended to heaven by means of a rope, or otherwise, and those who have gone down to the subterranean kwzimu and returned. Yet seldom, if ever, do we find it stated that the ancestral spirits live in the sky. Those who go there have some errand either to the Supreme Being or to a distinct set of Heaven- dwellers quite apart from ordinary human beings, and it is these whom they encounter and not their deceased friends. The country of the dead, on the other hand, is reached, usu- ally, through a cave, or a hole in the ground, such as an animal’s burrow, or by plunging to the bottom of a pool. The Wachaga speak of several gateways, probably caverns, which formerly existed in certain specified localities, but are now closed: this seems to be a tradition distinct from that of the gates on the eastern horizon, mentioned in the last chapter. In old times it was possible for a man who had lost all his chil- dren and feared the extinction of his line to enter one of these gateways and lay his case before the ghosts. They would hear his request and send him home, with the promise of another child. But the number of applicants became so great, that the ancestors grew weary of attending to them and closed two of the entrances — a statement which may preserve the memory of some volcanic disturbance. The third remained open for some time longer, but this approach, too, was finally cut off, and nowadays no one can even find the way to it . 1
The details of the pilgrimage thus made by bereaved par-
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ents are interesting, because of their resemblance to some features of a story familiar to us all from childhood and al- ready referred to in our first chapter — the “ Frau Halle ” of Grimm’s Kinder- und Haus-M'drchen. There are numerous African variants of this , 2 some of which will be discussed pres- ently; their mythological background is unmistakably the same as that of the legend now before us. Having passed through the gateway, the father came to a door in a kraal-fence, where he sat down and waited till an old woman appeared. She led him into a hut and hid him in the sleeping-compartment. At noon “ when the sun rests ” — the hour for apparitions in hot countries — he saw a band of children passing, led by a man who seemed to be their guardian, and recognised among them his own lost little ones. He pointed them out to the old wo- man and then she sent him away, first asking him whether he would rather pass through the “ sewage-door ” or the “ sugar- cane door.” If he chose the latter, he was thrown up — in some way not explained in our text — through the fireplace, was burnt by the fire and cut by the sugar-cane and reached his home only to die. If he declared for the less inviting alter- native, he found himself in his own house, unhurt, and lived for many years thereafter. Presumably, though this is not stated, he found his children awaiting him, or else one of them was re-born shortly after.
The belief that lakes and pools are entrances to and exits from the spii*it-world is probably due to the frequency of deaths by drowning in a mountainous country where streams are swift and dangerous and their beds full of treacherous pot- holes. The mother who has been tricked into drowning her child throws herself into the pool after it and so reaches the spirit-country, as also does Maruwa, in the tale to be given presently.
But it is sometimes easier of access. Where the ghosts are believed to dwell in the sacred groves, there is at least no
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physical barrier to keep people from penetrating their haunts, though of course they do so at their peril. Junod gives a pretty story 3 of which the scene is laid at Machakeni, close to Lourengo Marques. The people had enjoyed abundant harvests for some years, but had become careless and neglected to sacrifice. So, one season, when they had as usual planted their sweet-potatoes and sugar-cane in the fertile marsh-land at the foot of the hills, they found that nothing would grow. Threatened with famine, they moved to the hills and planted there, but could get no crops. The men, one day, when out hunting, followed an animal down to the plain and found that their old gardens had produced abundantly, after all, but not a thing could they gather. Not one of them could get a potato out of the ground or detach a banana from the tree. Then the ghosts came out and chased them, so that they were glad to escape with their lives. The women, going into the forest to look for firewood found a bees’ nest in a hollow tree. Every- one who put in her hand to take out the honey, had it broken off at the wrist. The only one who escaped was the chief’s daughter, Sabulana, who refused to go near the tree. She tied up the bundles of wood for her companions and helped them to lift them to their heads. When they reached home, she advised that “ the bones should be thrown ” (the diviner con- sulted) to find out what should be done. The oracle directed Sabulana to go to the sacred grove and offer a sacrifice. Next morning, all the people assembled and sat down outside the grove: Sabulana alone dared to enter it. She found the spirits all seated in an open space, like the tribal chiefs and headmen when gathered for solemn deliberation. They asked her why she had come, and she replied in a song, which, as reported, does not seem to tell us much:
“ It is I, it is I, Sabulana,
Daughter of the grass-land —
It is I, the daughter of the grass-land,
Sabulana, Sabulana,”
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Ghosts, apparently, are not immortal — indeed, if we may believe the account given to the Rev. J. Raum 2 by the Wa- chaga, they are kept alive by the offerings of the living. This account is one of the most detailed I have seen, and probably represents ideas current, though not recorded, elsewhere. The ancestral spirits are called in Chaga warimu (or voarumu ) and defined as the “ shadows ” ( sher'isha ) of people who have died. (The shadow is often identified with the life, or soul, or one of the souls.) The ghosts are so called, say the Wachaga, “ because they have no bones ” — they look like living people, only you cannot take hold of them, and when you see them they are apt to vanish suddenly and instantane- ously. Some are like old men, some like men in their prime ; there are women and children among them: in fact, it would seem as if every one remained at the age he or she had reached at death. They live underground much as they had done on earth; they have their chiefs and their tribal assemblies; and when a man dies he passes to the dwelling-place of his own clan, while the clan remains with its own section of the tribe. But not all the ghosts are to be found in this abode — only the fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers of the people now living. These are called the “ upper ” (or “ recent ”) ghosts (warimu wa uwc ) or “ those who are known ” ( wa - ishiwo ), their names and standing being still remembered. They partake of the offerings made by their descendants, and it is implied that these keep them alive. The great-great- grandfather and previous generations get crowded out from the sacrifices by the later comers; they are unable to keep up their strength and sink down into a lower region. These are called wakilengeche or sometimes warimu wangiinduka , “ the ghosts who turn back.” Unlike the waishiwo, who freely com- municate with the living, they never show themselves on the upper earth, though they haunt their old homes secretly and make people ill in order to get sacrifices out of them. But the
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oldest among them cannot even do this; they can no longer reach the sacrifices, and “ their life is done they have “ gone to pieces ” and have no further connection with living men. These are called the walenge. The three regions of the dead are clearly distinguished in the legend of the Heaven-Tree . 3 One meets elsewhere with indications that the ghosts are not supposed to be immortal, but I do not think I have anywhere else found so clear and definite a statement on the subject as this. The usual name for the underground abode of the dead — kuzimu or some cognate 4 — is the locative form of a root very widely distributed in the Bantu languages, with the meaning of an ancestral ghost. Thus the Anyanja have the word mzimu, pi. mi-zimu (though, as we have seen, they sometimes use “ Mulungu ” in the same sense), and it survives in Swahili in the phrase ana wazimu (“ he is mad ” — liter- ally, “he has spirits”), though otherwise obsolete. In Zulu, also, it is nearly obsolete, being used as a collective only in one particular phrase: the expressions now current are ama- dhlozi, of which the derivation is not very clear , 5 and ama- tongOy manifestly connected with uburtongo, “ sleep,” and ap- plied to ghosts when they appear in dreams, while the other term is more generally used of spirits which show themselves in other ways, e.g. in the form of snakes, etc. The two names denote the same class of being, only viewed under different aspects, and, even so, no very exact distinction can be drawn between them, as Zulus use the words, to a great extent, inter- changeably.
It should be noted that mzimu and its cognates are not, as a rule (Swahili is an exception) treated as belonging to the per- son-class — perhaps from a dim feeling that a ghost is not more, but less, than a human being. Such a feeling seems to come out in the Chaga beliefs already detailed, though it is not quite consistent with the dread entertained of the ghosts’ ma- leficent power. But it may be that the change of concord merely
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indicates the idea of a disembodied non- human, but not neces- sarily infra - human personality. Animals, by the bye, are usually included in the person-class: they are intelligences invested with bodies, and we seldom, if ever, find them sharply contrasted with human beings. 6 This is a point to which we must return when speaking of Totemism.
We shall have to consider, later on, whether, and how far, we have to deal, in Africa, with spirits which were not, origi- nally, the ghosts of the dead. Certainly, it is the latter which bulk largest in the people’s imagination ; and, as we have al- ready seen in the case of local gods, some spirits which at first seem to have quite a different nature, may ultimately be traced back to such an origin.
We cannot say that ghosts are divided into benignant and malignant — except in so far as a man is supposed to retain after death the qualities which distinguished him during his lifetime. Less weight seems accorded to this consideration than one might expect, at any rate in the case of bad people — perhaps the maxim De mortuis is more thoroughly acted upon than by ourselves. At any rate, what is far more frequently and emphatically asserted is that the behaviour of the ghosts largely depends on the treatment they receive from their sur- viving relatives. When they send locusts — as Chipoka did to Mlanje in 1894 7 — or sickness, or other disasters, it is to remind the living of neglected duties.
It is hardly true to say that the predominant feeling with which the ghosts are regarded is one of terror and dislike, and that their cult is solely determined by fear. Many stories give evidence of affection surviving the grave and prompting interference on behalf of the living. The statements of Cal- laway’s informants on this head are very interesting. On the other hand, the same evidence shows that their ethics, like those of their surviving descendants, have not outgrown the tribal standpoint. A ghost is not expected to care for any
i j:l :r j,a ) n:- - 2
- • . I '
PLATE XVI
1. Carved post ( k'lgango ) set up by the Giryama on or near the place where the head of the family is buried.
2. Giryama shrines for the spirits. Each small post represents a deceased member of the family. Offerings of beer are poured into a pot sunk in the ground (not visible in photograph).
After photographs by Prof. A. Werner.
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outside his own family} and the family do not feel that any attentions are due to unrelated ghosts. This was avowedly the reason why Unkulunkulu was not worshipped — there were none living who knew themselves to be of his blood . 8 Of course, the ghosts of chiefs or famous medicine-men will be honoured by people outside their own families, and these, as we have seen in Nyasaland and Uganda, may attain the status of gods.
The Wachaga do not sacrifice to any ghost more than three generations back — that is, expressly and by name — for one gathers from the account already quoted that, if the Waki- lengeche can by their own exertions secure a share in the offer- ings, it rests with them to do so. There is one exception, however: each clan sacrifices to the ancestor who first settled and planted in the Kilimanjaro country, when the tribe migrated thither from the north, and whose name, in some cases at least, has been preserved . 9
The Wachaga believe, that while the spirits can influence the course of events on earth, they, in their turn, can be affected by revolutions in the affairs of the living. Thus, the coming of the Europeans to East Africa has made itself felt in the Underworld. What, exactly, Raum’s informant meant by saying that “ the white men, when they came here, also came to the ancestral spirits,” and that the latter have to pay taxes to them, is not very clear, but no doubt he felt it to be a legiti- mate inference from the hard times experienced by the living. “It is said: Alas! even among the ghosts there is misery, O ye people! If you see an old woman of the spirits, she looks dirtyj they are ragged, and they have grown thin. Those who are carried off by the spirits in dreams, by night, always say so, and so do the diviners.” As to this carrying off of people — the ghosts of dead Wachaga are not content with merely appearing in dreams to their relatives — we shall have more to say presently.
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The spirit-world is reached most easily, as we have seen, through caves or holes in the earth. The Wachaga speak of gates leading thither — some say there are two “ in the east, where sky and earth join.” 10 One of these gives entrance to heaven, the other “ to the ghosts.” The distinction is remark- able, and is also found in a legend already quoted, where the two gates are located, not on the distant horizon, but on Kili- manjaro mountain . 11 Here, those passing by the ghosts’ gate see a blazing fire within, a touch which may be due to the infil- tration of Moslem ideas from the coast ; though, if there were any warrant for connecting this gate with the west (of which there is no hint in our authority) it might equally well be sug- gested by the flaming sunset.
A widow who had lost her only son once made her way to the eastern gate and was so importunate that the Chief of the Ghosts at length consented to restore her son, whom she found awaiting her on her return home. Tradition has preserved the names of various people who went to the spirit-land and returned, perhaps persons who recovered from cataleptic trances. There is a song sung by young girls:
“ Would I might go, like Kidova’s daughter To seek the spirits beyond the water —
To go I were fain,
And behold, and return again.” 12
The Bapedi (a branch of the Bechwana living in the Eastern Transvaal) believed that the cave of Marimatle, from which the human race originally issued (as elsewhere from Kapirimtiya), was also the entrance to the spirit-world . 13 And we find in so many different places, that we may presume the legend to be or have been current all over Bantu Africa, accounts of men who, pursuing some animal into a burrow, have, like Mpobe, reached the abode of the dead. Thus the Zulus say that one Uncama 14 followed a porcupine into its
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hole and, after a day and a night came upon a village, where he saw smoke rising and people moving about, and heard dogs baying and children crying: “ all things resembled those which are above, mountains, precipices, and rivers.” He did not wait to make a closer examination but said: “ Let me not go to these people, for I do not know them; perhaps they will kill me,” and returned with all speed, to find his own funeral being celebrated when he reached his house. Another man, Um- katshana, 15 had a similar experience when hunting a buck, but went on till he actually met “ the people who are beneath ” face to face, saw them milking their cattle, and recognised one of his own friends among them. “ They said to him: c Go home! Do not stay here! 1 So he went home again.” The Wairamba, 16 in Eastern Unyamwezi, also tell of a man who followed a porcupine — this time a wounded one — under- ground, and came to the village of the dead, where he was kindly welcomed and met various deceased relatives, while the porcupine he had speared turned out to be his own sister. It was explained to him that, while the ghosts enjoy a happy and peaceful life in the Underworld, with cattle feeding in rich pastures and abundance of almost everything they need, they have no grain and therefore have to come up to earth in the shape of animals and steal it from the gardens. He was there- fore charged with messages to the living, desiring them to bring offerings of porridge and beer to the graves from time to time. (This is in marked contrast to several other stories of the kind, where it is made a sine qua non that the visitor shall never tell his experiences.) He was also assured that his sister bore no malice, “ because you did it in ignorance, and, besides, her wound will soon heal down here.”
This story is told to explain how the custom of offerings to the dead was instituted; and the fact strikes me as peculiar, because elsewhere it does not seem to be felt that the custom needs any explanation. It is of immemorial antiquity and, given
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the belief that the dead continue to live, somewhere in or near their graves, a life not very different from their previous state of existence, its utility is surely self-evident.
The introduction of the porcupine is interesting, because we learn from Messrs Melland and Cholmeley 17 that the Waku- luwe have a sect or guild of porcupine-hunters ( waleli ) who own that they visit the village of the fisinzwa (ghosts) when they enter the porcupine’s burrows, and “ that the Chief of the village is called Lungabalwa and is most hospitable to them and never lets them go away empty-handed, always giving them a porcupine.”
No doubt the appearance and habits of the porcupine are sufficient to account for this connection with the unseen world. He certainly looks uncanny; he burrows in the ground, and, while very destructive in the gardens, he is never, or rarely, seen by daylight. Natives firmly believe he has the power of shooting his quills at an assailant.
But the most usual mode of access to the spirit-world is through the lakes and smaller sheets of water in which the mountainous Chaga country abounds . 18 More especially does this apply to the deep pools or pot-holes under a waterfall. Through such a “linn,” the ghosts are apt to ascend and seize on any sheep or goats found grazing within a convenient dis- tance, and pick up any wooden troughs (used in making beer) which people may have left lying about . 19 Or if a man goes too near the bank, he may find himself seized and pulled into the water. It is not stated whether this means actual and final drowning, but we may infer such to be the case, for it is be- lieved that, if you happen to have a knife or other sharp instru- ment by you, and can give yourself a cut in time, you will escape, since the ghosts will only accept an unblemished victim. Some say, however, that this never happens now 20 — at any rate in the districts of Kisangada and Ofurunye, where the ghosts were formerly a great nuisance, coming from the pools
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in the Msangachi valley to steal food from people’s houses at night. It was proposed that a beast should be sacrificed to them, but some said that this would be no use in the end and that it would be better to find a childless man who should put a curse on the pools — not with “ bell, book and candle,” but with the “ cursing-bell ” and “ cursing-pot.” 21 (A childless man would have nothing to lose by the vengeance of the ghosts.) He accordingly took one of these implements in each hand and pronounced his commination :
“ If ye will not cease from troubling the folk,
Perish and die away — sink down and rot. . . .
But if ye will cease and leave them in quiet,
Ye shall continue and be preserved! ”
This ceremony had the desired effect.
But the ghosts are also believed to remove people tempora- rily to the Underworld and restore them. Sometimes during the night a sleeper will disappear, leaving only his clothes on the bed . 22 These must not be touched, nor must anyone call him, otherwise he will never come back. There is apparently no hostile intention; he is transported to the Underworld in order to be told what the spirits intend to do, or what they wish the living to do, and, if he behaves himself discreetly, no harm will happen to him. But he must not show undue curiosity or make remarks on what he sees: the shades are very sensitive to criticism — especially of their household arrangements. “ For the Ancestors eat very nasty things. Their children go out to search for food and come home with crickets and moths ” — presumably in the absence of offerings from above. Anyone who shows surprise at this or other details of the cooking will be detained for ever (and perhaps beaten as well) so that he may not talk and put the ghosts to shame among the living. More tactful visitors are sent back with whatever communi- cations are deemed desirable, and it is from these and the di-
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viners ( walashi ) that people get to know what is happening among the ghosts.
The lakes mentioned are personified in a very curious way. In old times, if wars or raids were going on, they could be heard shouting: “ O-o-o! be easy. We shall drive away the enemy! ” After the invaders had retreated, the shrill cries of joy raised by the spirit- women arose from under the water . 23 A story which in its present form must be quite re- cent, tells how a certain pool claimed human victims . 24 A child disappeared and was sought for in vain; at last a voice was heard from the pool, ordering the parents to bring offerings of food and leave them on the bank. Next day the offerings had disappeared and the child’s dead body lay in their place. A certain European announced his intention of attacking the monster; he plunged into the pool and fired his rifle, when a door opened in the bottom. He fired again — seven times in all — and at each shot a door opened. He entered and en- gaged in a desperate struggle, from which he narrowly escaped with his life. He made another attempt and again penetrated the doors, but returned to the surface so badly burnt that he died in a few days. No precise details of the struggle are given, and we have no means of judging whether, and how far, the story is based on an actual occurrence. It might have been suggested by some accident to a daring climber in an active volcanic crater.
Nowadays, says the narrator of the cursing incident, the ghosts live in the pools and the “ clan-groves,” 25 in the latter case, apparently above ground. But it would seem that they sometimes come out to dance. A man heard them, one night, not far from his house, and, thinking it was a merry-making of his neighbours, went out to join them, in spite of his wife’s protests. He soon discovered his mistake, but got home again with no worse experience than a fright . 26 The Wadoe (a tribe inhabiting the mainland opposite Zanzibar) speak of the
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PLATE XV
1. Abarea, the narrator of the Holawaka story.
2. In the lower photograph, he is shown struggling with a young man who was reluctant to be photo- graphed and dragging him in front of the camera. The stick held by the young man (called hoko) is used for removing thorny branches from the path.
After photographs by Prof. A. Werner.
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The Chaga substitute for the Chameleon story 28 is to some extent a reversal of the current type: it deals, not with the introduction of death, but with the saving of the human race from summary destruction. The Salamander went to heaven and complained that the earth was becoming over-populated; the friendly little House-lizard overheard him and, thinking: “ If God (Iruwa) destroys men, where am I going to sleep? ” went and said: “The Salamander is deceiving thee; there are only a few people in the world.” So he remains a welcome in- mate of the hut, but the spiteful Salamander was driven from human habitations and hides among the stones.
Before turning to the myth of Walumbe, referred to in our last chapter, which marks a somewhat different order of thought in contrast to those we have just been considering, we must refer in passing to a somewhat different notion found in some places, viz., that death, though universal, may in indi- vidual cases be remediable. The Wachaga have two legends illustrative of this belief. One is of a gigantic snail which could revive a dead man by crawling over and lubricating him. After this marvellous property had been accidentally discovered, people used to carry their dead friends into the forest and leave them to be crawled over by the snail. But a chief who was at war with the tribe and to whom the secret of their never-diminishing numbers was betrayed by a woman, sent men to hunt up the snail and spear it to death. 29
The hyenas, too, 30 it is said, used to possess a magic staff called Kirasa , with which they could recall a dead man to life. They used it to revive dead men, whom they questioned as to the manner of their death, before eating them. 31 But a man once stole Kirasa, and the hyenas were in great straits; for, since every one who died recovered, there were no corpses to eat. At length they recovered it and, fearing lest the same thing might happen again, threw it into a deep pit where neither they nor any one else could ever get at it.
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The Baganda have a Chameleon-legend of much the same character as those already mentioned, but, side by side with it and probably introduced by the Hamitic influence so visible in other parts of their national life, is a legend which shows Death as a person — in fact a son of Gulu (Heaven). When Kintu and Nambi left Gulu’s presence to settle on the earth, carrying with them the domestic animals and plants which were henceforth to constitute the staple foodstuffs of the country, he warned them on no account to turn back should they find that they had forgotten anything. Walumbe (Death) was absent at the time, and Gulu was anxious that the couple should start before his return, as he would insist on coming with them. When they were about half way, they discovered that they had left behind the grain for feeding the fowl. Kintu insisted on returning for it, though Nambi remonstrated , 32 say- ing: “ No, don’t go back. Death will have come home by this time and he is execeedingly wicked; when he sees you he will want to come here and I don’t want him, he does harm.” But Kintu went back, and it fell out as Gulu and Nambi had said — the unwelcome brother-in-law followed him down to earth, though, for a time, he gave no trouble. When Kintu’s children were growing up, Walumbe came and demanded one of the girls to cook for him. Kintu refused and Walumbe threat- ened to kill the children, but Kintu paid no heed to the threat, and the incident was repeated several times. At last the children began to sicken and die, and the father, now thoroughly alarmed, went and appealed to Gulu for help. Gulu answered as might be expected — and at considerable length — but afterwards so far relented that he sent another of his sons, Kaikuzi, to fetch Death back. Kaikuzi at first tried persuasion, but Death refused to come, unless his sister Nambi came too. Kaikuzi then seized, him in order to take him away by force, but Death slipped from his hands and took refuge underground. Twice Kaikuzi succeeded in seizing
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him and dragging him to the surface, and twice he escaped. After a while, when Death seemed to be getting tired out, Kaikuzi directed Kintu to give orders that every one was to stay indoors for two days; the children were not to go out with the goats, and if, by any chance, any one saw Death come out of the ground, he was on no account to give the alarm. How- ever, it seems that, in spite of the prohibition, so’me little boys were out herding at Tanda (in Singo, the central district of Uganda), and while they were playing in a meadow, they saw Death appearing above ground and at once raised the shrill cry, nduluy which gives warning of danger. Kaikuzi hurried up, but it was too late — Death had once more disappeared, and Kaikuzi declared he was tired of hunting him and should return to heaven. Kintu accepted this decision quite phil- osophically: “Very well — since you cannot get the better of Death, let him alone and return to Gulu’s. If he wants to kill men, let him — I, Kintu, will not cease begetting children, so that Death will never be able to make an end of my people.” So Kaikuzi returned, reported his failure, and thenceforth remained in heaven. 33
There seems here a distinct notion that the reproduction of the human species is necessitated by death. It is true that Kintu already had several children before Death began to exercise his power. But perhaps we are to understand that the family would have increased up to a comfortable limit and then stopped, had not the gaps made by Death called for indefinite multiplication. Or it may be that the exigencies of the story have betrayed the narrator into inconsistencies, as may happen in more sophisticated literature.
Death also appears, under the slightly different name of Olumbe (Orumbe) in the tale of Mpobe, the hunter, who, following an animal into its burrow, found himself in the country of the Dead. He found his dog and the game at a village where there were many people, and he was asked by
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the chief to give an account of himself. Having done so, he was allowed to depart, after being warned that if he spoke to any one of what he had seen, he would be killed. He returned home and successfully parried all inquiries, till at last his mother over-persuaded him and he told her. That night Mpobe heard some one calling him, and a voice said: “ I saw you when you told some one. . . . Since you have told your mother — very well; if you have anything to eat, eat it,” i.e. consume what substance you now possess. Mpobe made his property last out several years, and when Death came for him the next time, told him he had not yet finished. Death then went away, and Mpobe hid himself in the forest, thinking that so he might escape. Death tracked him down, and again he made excuse, saying that he had not yet consumed his property, whereat Death said: “ Make haste and finish it then, for I want to kill you.” Mpobe returned home and tried a fresh hiding-place every day, but finding all his efforts vain, went back to his house and resigned himself to his fate. Next time the inevitable question was repeated, he replied, “ I have finished up everything,” and his visitor rejoined: “Very good — since you have finished, die! ” — and Mpobe died.
The Kingdom of the Dead is here called Magombe; the incident of the hunter reaching it through following an animal into a hole occurs elsewhere, e.g., in an uncollected Yao tale, which was mentioned to me in conversation many years ago, but of which I have never succeeded in obtaining a copy. But the idea is one so likely to suggest itself to the primitive mind that we need not look for evidence of derivation.
Death is also personified in a curious tale recorded by P. Capus 34 from the Basumbwa, a tribe living at the south- western corner of the Victoria Nyanza. Here Death is called Lufu or (with the augmentative) Lirufu. Men who die herd his cattle for him — apparently in the upper world. A man died and left two sons, the younger of whom took the inheri-
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tance to himself, giving his elder brother only three cows and two slaves, and making him the herdsman. While he was out with his younger brother’s cattle, he met his father, who told him to drive his beasts home early on the morrow and meet him at the same place. The father was herding Death’s cattle, and, in the evening, drove them home along a road which passed through a great opening in the earth. On arriv- ing, they seem to have met with people, who asked : “ Have you brought another? ” — but nothing more is said about these, and he hid his son for the night. In the morning Death, the “ Great Chief,” came out. One side of him was entirely decayed, so much so that “ caterpillars ” ( nshlmi ) dropped off it; the other was sound. His servants washed and dressed the wounds, and he uttered a curse: “He who goes trading to-day, will be robbed. She who is about to bring forth will die with her child. He who cultivates to-day will lose his crops. He who goes into the Bush will be eaten by a lion.” On the following day, Death’s servants washed his sound side, perfumed and anointed him, and he reversed the maledictions of the day before. The young man’s father said to him: “ If you had only come to-day, you would have become very rich. As it is, the best thing you can do is to return home and leave your brother in possession of the inheritance, for it is evident that your destiny is to be poor.”
At first sight, one is tempted to think that Death regularly distributes good and evil fortune to mankind on alternate days. But in that case it is difficult to see why the father should have told his son to come on that particular day, and then deplored the fact, as though he himself had not been responsible. We must therefore suppose, either that the event was an excep- tional one, or that the arrangement was not made known to all Lirufu’s subjects.
Kalunga, or Kalunga-ngombe (“ Kalunga of the Cattle ”) is the name for Death (“ the King of the Shades ”) among the
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Mbundu of Angola, 35 but it is also used for the place of the dead, the sea, and (as by the Herero and Kwanyama) for a Supreme Being. Heli Chatelain gives a story 38 in which a young hero, Ngunza Kilundu kia Ngunza, on hearing that his younger brother Maka is dead, announces his intention of fighting Kalunga-ngombe. He set a trap in the bush and waited near it with his gun, till he heard a voice calling from the trap: “ I am dying, dying! ” He was about to fire when the voice said: “Do not shoot, come to free me.” Ngunza asked who was speaking, and the answer came: “ I am Ka- lunga-ngombe.” “ Thou art Kalunga-ngombe who killed my younger brother Maka? ” The answer was: “ I am not ever killing wantonly; people are brought to me. Well, I give thee four days; on the fifth, go and fetch thy younger brother in Kalunga.” Ngunza went and was welcomed by Kalunga- ngombe, who made him sit down beside him. One after another, the dead arrived from the upper world. One, on being questioned as to the cause of his death, said that some one who was envious of his wealth had bewitched him. Another, a woman, said her husband had killed her for un- faithfulness, and so on. Kalunga-ngombe said, not unreason- ably: “ Thou seest, Ngunza Kilundu kia Ngunza, it is not I that am always killing mankind; the hosts of Ndongo ” (in other words, “ the people of Angola ”), “ they are brought to me. Therefore go and fetch thy younger brother.” But Maka refused to come, saying that in Kalunga the conditions were much better than on earth. “ What I have here, on earth perchance shall I have it? ” So Ngunza had to return without him. Kalunga-ngombe gave him “ seeds of manioc, maize, Kaffir-corn,” and other things — a list too long to reproduce — to plant on earth, and told him: “ In eight days, I will go to visit thee at thy home.” When he arrived, he found that Ngunza had fled, going to the east, and he followed him from place to place till he came up with him, when he announced
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that he was going to kill him. Ngunza protested: “Thou
canst not kill me, because I did no crime against thee. Thou ever sayest : ‘ People are brought to me, I don’t kill any one.’ Well, now, why dost thou pursue me to the east? ” Kalunga- ngombe, for all answer, attacked him with his hatchet, but Ngunza “ turned into a Kituta spirit,” and so, presumably, passed out of his power.
Several points in the above are obscure, perhaps because the story was taken from “ poorly-written ” notes of an in- formant who died before Chatelain prepared his book for the press. It does not appear why Kalunga should have intended to kill Ngunza — perhaps the intimation of his visit was intended to convey a warning, which the latter disregarded; but, in that case, why does Kalunga fail to explain why he departs from his usual custom? Perhaps, as in the case of Mpobe, he had told Ngunza to say nothing about what he had seen in the underworld, and Ngunza had disobeyed him; but of this there is no hint in the story as it stands. The matter of the Kituta , too, calls for further explanation. A Kituta or Kianda 37 is a spirit who “ rules over the water and is fond of great trees and of hill-tops”; one of a class of beings to be discussed in a later chapter.
The Ne (a Kru tribe of the Ivory Coast) 38 introduce a personification of Death into several of their folk-tales. In one he is an eight-headed monster, one of whose heads is cut off by a boy, on hearing that his mother is dead, a parallel to Ngunza’s attack on Death. The boy escapes from the monster but is caught in a bush-fire and perishes, his soul escaping in the form of a hawk. This is why hawks are always seen hovering over bush-fires.
Another Ne story is a variant of many well-known tales dealing with cannibals. A young girl goes to Death’s village and is sheltered in the hut of an old woman. Death, however, discovers her, and refuses to let her have anything
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to eat till she tells his name — a link with another group of stories 39 not specially well represented in Africa. She is helped by a bird, who betrays the name to her. Ultimately Death’s big toe is cut off, and all the people he has devoured issue from it. This last incident is found in tales from such dis- tant parts as Basutoland (“ Masilo and Masilonyane”) and Kilimanjaro, and we shall have to recur to it in a later chapter.
The Ne have another legend connected with Death which, as far as I know, has not yet been recorded from any other quarter. A man applied to Blenyiba, the great fetish of Ca- valla, for a charm to make the approach of Death impossible. Blenyiba gave him a stone to block the path by which alone the enemy could approach ; but as the man was transporting it to the spot, he met Nemla — the small antelope locally equiv- alent to Brer Rabbit, who offered to help him to carry it. The treacherous Nemla, while pretending to help, sang a spell which made the rock immovable, leaving the path open, as it is to this day, “ and the rock is yet alive to testify of it.”
In the next chapter, we shall meet with other legends bear- ing on the Underworld regarded as the abode of the dead. Perhaps some of those just recounted might seem to be more appropriately treated in connection with Ancestral Ghosts.
But, as already pointed out, the boundaries between the various departments of our subject are extremely difficult to draw, and the latter are apt to run into one another. No attempt has been made, throughout this work, to adhere to a rigidly scientific classification.
CHAPTER IV
THE ANCESTRAL SPIRITS
T HE BELIEF in the continued existence of human be- ings after death, and their influence on the affairs of the survivors is really the bed-rock fact in Bantu and Negro religion. Even where there is a developed cult of definite spiritual powers, as for example in Uganda and Dahome, these have in many cases grown out of ancestral ghosts, and, as has been already remarked, many beings which now seem to be Nature Powers pure and simple, may have had a like origin. This is not to deny that there are nature spirits which have been such from the beginning, or that the two conceptions may sometimes have been fused into one personality, as per- haps, for instance, in Leza, but only to repeat once more what has so often been said as to the difficulty of exact classification.
Some Africans, for example, the Twi and Ewe, seem to have arrived at something like a coherent philosophy of the soul. There is the shade, which either haunts the neighbour- hood of the grave, or sinks into the subterranean abode of the ghosts ( kuzimu), and the soul (called in Twi ‘ kra’), which is reincarnated in one of the person’s descendants . 1 But it may be doubted whether this doctrine is everywhere consciously and clearly held, and one must be prepared for vague and sometimes contradictory statements. Sometimes it is only those who have died a violent death who are said to haunt the upper earth} sometimes those who have gone down to the Under- world are believed to come back from time to time. In Nya- saland, the ghost is thought to remain near the grave for some time, perhaps a year or two, and then to depart, probably into the Underworld.
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lizard, but in one case the Hare, starts on his own account, arrives before the Chameleon and delivers the wrong message, apparently from sheer love of mischief. This is the case in the Giryama version just referred to, whereas in the Nyanja one , 7 Mulungu sends both, though no reason is given. But in some cases it appears as if he had intended the matter to be decided by the first arrival. The Subiya 8 say that Leza sent off the Chameleon with the message as already stated; then, after giving him a good start (in fact, waiting till he had got half-way), he despatched the Lizard with instructions to say nothing if the Chameleon had already arrived; but if he had not yet come in, he was to say, “ Men shall die and not live again.”
The Luyi story is somewhat different . 9 When Nyambe and his wife Nasilele lived on earth, they had a dog, which died. Nyambe was deeply grieved and wanted to recall him to life, but Nasilele, who did not like the dog, said, “ For my part, I don’t want him back, he is a thief! ” Nyambe insisted: “ As for me, I am fond of my dog,” — but the wife was obdu- rate and the corpse was thrown out. Soon afterwards, Nasi- lele’s mother died, and this time it was the wife who pleaded for the recall of the dead, and the husband who refused. Nasilele’s mother died “ for good,” and it would appear (though this is not expressly stated) that she therefore wanted to destroy the whole human race. The account goes on: “ They sent the Chameleon and the Hare, with messages of opposite import: the Hare arrived first, and therefore men have to die without hope of return.”
The Subiya 10 tell the first part of this story without any reference to Leza; it is simply “ the first man ” and his wife who quarrel over the dog. But there is every reason to think that Leza and the First Ancestor are identical. The Subiya legend, moreover, contains an additional episode not found in the Luyi version, at least as related to Jacottet. The man
PLATE XIV
Type of Zanzibar Swahili.
After a photograph by Dr. Aders.
Biw
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repents and agrees to restore his wife’s mother to life. He has her carried into her house and treats her with “ medicines ” (herbs), giving his wife strict orders to keep the door shut. She begins to revive, and all goes well, till he has to go into the forest to seek some fresh herbs ; in his absence his wife opens the door and finds her mother alive, but “ immediately her heart came out ” (of her body) “ and she died again.” This time the husband refused to do anything more and no one since then has recovered after dying.
Kropf 11 gives a remarkable variant current among the Amaxosa of the Eastern Cape Province. This is clearer and more coherent than many others, but we cannot be certain that this proves it to be the earlier: it might be the result of later reflection after the primitive story had been partly forgotten. At first, people did not die, and the earth became so over- crowded that its inhabitants could scarcely breathe. An assembly was held to discuss what should be done, and some said: “ The only thing that can save us is, that people should die, so that we can get air.” Others approved this, and at last it was decided that two messengers should be sent to lay the question before the Creator, the Chameleon and the Lizard being chosen for the purpose. The former was to say: “ The great ones of the earth have resolved that people are not to die! ” while the Lizard was to say: “ We want them to die.” Here the question seems to be one of dying or not dying, and not of reviving after death. The Chameleon was given a certain start, in order to make the race a fair one 5 but, as in the other versions, he lingered, zigzagging along the path and stopping to catch flies by the way (some say, to eat the berries of a certain shrub which is pointed out), and finally went to sleep ; when, of course, the Lizard overtook and passed him.
The rest of the story need not be repeated, but we may note that the reception of the Chameleon’s message seems to
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have more point when coming from the authority whose voice has decided the matter in dispute. “ Since that time,” says Kropf or his informant, “ death has reigned on earth. Both animals are hated, the Chameleon is poisoned with tobacco- juice wherever found, and the Lizard has to run for his life, for the Bushman eats every one he catches.”
The intulwa (or intulo ), by the bye, is considered by the Zulus as unlucky as the Chameleon, and one entering a hut is an exceedingly bad omen. I remember a pathetic touch in a letter Written for Okamsweli, mother of the late Chief Dinuzulu, when her son was in exile at St. Helena, in which was mentioned, among other incidents, that one of these liz- ards had come into her hut, “ but she was not afraid and was c strengthening her heart ’ against the evil influence.” Both creatures are perfectly harmless, though the lizard especially is often believed to be poisonous in countries where there is, so far as one knows, no other superstition connected with it.
One does not know whether to conclude that the myth gave rise to the belief in the reptile’s poisonous properties, or vice versa-, among the Bantu, at any rate, I am inclined to think that the former may be the case, and the poison theory a rationalising afterthought. It is interesting, in this connection, to note one or two bits of Swahili folklore with regard to lizards. The little striped lizards, so common in houses, and so useful in ridding them of flies, etc., are called mjusi kafri , 12 “ the infidel lizard,” and Moslems say it is the duty of every believer to kill them — by biting off their heads, some say, but for this I will not vouch. I have heard two reasons given — one being that when a certain King had ordered the Prophet to be burnt alive (I think this must be some confusion with the legend of Abraham and Nimrod), the mjusi-kafri sat by and endeavoured to blow up the flames with its breath. Others say, that when the Prophet and his two companions were hidden in the cave, whereas the Spider wove a web across
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the entrance, and the Dove laid two eggs on the threshold to deceive the pursuers, the Lizard tried to betray him by nodding his head in the direction of the cave. Whether these stories are current outside Africa I do not know. Possibly some ancient aboriginal beliefs have been adapted to Moslem tra- dition. The entry under Kinyonge in Krapf’s Swahili diction- ary seems to indicate that the legend was at one time known here. A larger and beautifully coloured lizard, sky-blue with a golden head, called Kande at Lamu, is sometimes seen run- ning up and down the stems of coconut palms. Its habit when at rest, of nodding its head up and down has suggested to the popular mind that it is engaged in counting all who come within its ken, as a result of which, they will die. Women, when they see it, call out: Kande , Kande , usini- wange! — “do not count me! ” This may have some con- nection with a forgotten legend of the kind current, as we have seen, among the inland tribes (Giryama, Kamba, etc.). In West Africa, we find the legend among the Duala 13 and the Bakwiri of Kamerun — the latter combining it with another very ancient myth which we must notice in detail later. They also associate the Chameleon with the Salamander instead of the usual Lizard. In Bamum, as also in Abeokuta and Benin, the Chameleon is frequently represented in wood-carving and metal-work, but its exact place in the mythology of these tribes has yet to be determined. It is remarkable that, while the legend of the origin of Death is told on the Gold Coast with the Sheep and the Goat 14 as messengers, there are Twi and Ewe proverbs which indicate that these are of recent intro- duction and that the Chameleon had his place in the older form of the myth.
The dread which this creature seems to inspire — and indeed, its appearance and its ways, not to mention its changes of colour, make it uncanny enough to suggest any amount of superstition — is well illustrated by Struck. 15 He relates that
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two boys of the Bulu tribe, whom he had the opportunity of questioning at Hamburg, were very communicative about all the animals known to them in the Zoological Gardens till they caught sight of the Chameleon in the Reptile House. Both immediately fell silent and made a wide circuit to avoid it; the only information they could be induced to give was that, “ God had sent it.”
Meinhof, some years ago , 16 suggested that the Chameleon figures in this myth because it comes into the category of “ soul-animals ” ( Seelentiere ), 17 i.e., those thought of as em- bodiments of departed spirits. Such, for various reasons, are snakes, lizards, birds, fish and others. Animals seen in the neighbourhood of graves, especially such as burrow in the earth and might iseem to come out of the grave itself, would easily come to be looked on in such a light. It is true that the Chame- leon does not burrow in the earth, and is usually found on trees or bushes, but Wundt thinks that creeping things in gen- eral may have become soul-vehicles by an extension of the idea originally associated with the maggots actually found feeding on corpses. In a later work, however , 18 Meinhof has adopted another explanation, thinking that the real reason is given in a Duala tale which describes the Chameleon as “ always trembling, as if just about to die — yet it does not die,” at the time, and therefore it is presumed that it never will. The Chameleon, moreover, says Meinhof, is the mes- senger of the Moon, and its changes of colour afford an obvious reason for their connection.
But, unfortunately for the theory, the Chameleon, so far as I am aware, is nowhere said to be the messenger of the Moon. The Moon, with one or two insignificant exceptions, does not come into the Bantu legend at all, and the Hottentot and Bushman myths concerned with it make no mention of the Chameleon, the most usual messenger being the Hare. I think the two groups of tales must be originally distinct; the features
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they have in common are quite likely to have arisen inde- pendently.
The Chaga of Kilimanjaro have both a Moon story and a Chameleon story, but they are not in any way connected, and neither is quite of the usual type. This Bantu tribe has been much in contact with non-Bantu people, such as the Masai ; and, while much of their folk-lore is characteristically Bantu, it certainly contains some Masai elements.
The Hottentot myth has been variously reported. Bleek 19 gives four versions, the first differing in an important point from the other three. The part played by the Hare is inter- esting, as bearing on the very different conceptions of that animal found in Bantu and Hamitic folklore respectively.
This version, translated from an original Nama text taken down by Kronlein, says that the Moon sent a messenger — politely described by Bleek as “ an Insect,” though more plainly specified in the original 20 — to tell men: “As I die and dying live, so shall ye also die and dying live.” The “ Insect ” was slow, as might be expected ( vide the fi'i^st chapter of Sir A. Shipley’s Minor Horrors of War), and had not gone very, far before he was overtaken by the Hare, who asked his errand. On being informed of it, the Hare offered to carry it, being so much swifter, and the messenger consented. The Hare — it is not stated whether out of wanton mischief or stupidity — reversed the terms of the message, and the angry Moon, on his return, hit him with a piece of wood so that his lip is split to this day. One version adds that the Hare, in retaliation, scratched the Moon’s face, so that the marks are still visible. But the most important variation is the omission of the Insect — in all three versions the Hare is the original messenger sent, who, whether wilfully or not, falsifies the message. This is also the case in the form of the story obtained from the Nama, at a much later date, by Dr. Schultze, which also supplies the missing explanation, exculpating the Hare
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at the expense of his intellect. “ And the Hare delivered his message, saying: ‘ As my grandfather the Moon does, so ye also shall pass away and appear again. That is my message.’ But when he spoke so, the boys shouted : 1 What are you talking about? ’ Then the Hare (grew confused and) said: ‘ As I do — this is my message — so ye also shall die with staring eyes ’ ” — alluding to the appearance of a dead man whose eyes have not been closed. “ Then he went home and came to the Moon; and the Moon asked him (about his errand), but he was silent, well knowing that he had told a lie. So the Moon (hit him and) cut his mouth open.”
I was inclined to set down the Moon-myth as characteristi- cally Hamitic, as the Chameleon-myth is characteristically Bantu ; but I have not come across the former among either Masai, Somali, or Galla, while, on the other hand, the Bush- men 21 have the legend which I shall presently relate. The Bushmen, however, say nothing about the Hare being sent with a message to mankind ; while this is a prominent feature in the Galla and Nandi stories. It occurs to me that the Hottentots, whose ultimate derivation is Hamitic, might have brought with them the idea of a message sent by the Creator to assure men of immortality, and associated it with a Moon-myth borrowed from the Bushmen, who have exercised a strong influence on their language and probably also upon their thought.
The Bushmen say that the Hare was once a human being and that his mother died. When he was crying and mourning for her, the Moon tried to comfort him by saying that she was not really dead, “ but will return, as I also do.” The Hare would not believe this, and the Moon grew angry, hitting him on the face with his fist and, as already related, splitting his lip. He then turned him into a Hare and laid a curse upon him, that he should be hunted by dogs and caught and torn to pieces and “ die altogether,” and also on the whole human race, that they, too, should die without remedy.
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The Nandi 22 say that a Dog one day came to the first human beings and said: “ All people will die like the Moon, but unlike the Moon you will not return to life again, unless you give me some milk to drink out of your gourd, and beer to drink through your straw. If you do this, I will arrange for you to go to the river when you die and come to life again on the third day.” There is no hint here of any one sending the Dog, or of how he became possessed of his information. The people laughed at the Dog and, though they supplied him with re- freshment, they did not treat him with proper respect, but poured the milk and beer into the hollow top of a stool, for him to lap up, instead of giving him the one in a gourd and let- ting him drink the other through the tube 23 used for this bev- erage by the Nandi. So the Dog was angry, and, though he drank, went away saying, u All people will die and the Moon alone will return to life.”
I heard from Abarea, headman of the Galla in the Malindi District of the East Africa Protectorate, 24 the account given by the Southern Galla of the way in which death entered the world. God (Wak) sent a certain bird (called by the Galla, from its cry, Holawaka , “ the Sheep of God ”) with a message to men. The bird, which I have not yet satisfactorily identi- fied, though it may be the black and white hornbill,, is black, with a white patch on each shoulder, and cries a — a — a — like a sheep. (Abarea insisted much on its being black and white “ like the sky ” — perhaps the stormy sky — or, as the same word is used for black and blue, he may have meant the sky dappled with white clouds.) God gave him a crest, “ like a flag, to show that he was a messenger,” 25 and told him to tell men that when they felt themselves growing old and weak they had only to shed their skins and they would grow young again. The bird set out, but on the way saw a snake feeding on the carcass of a freshly-killed animal and was seized with a desire to share in the feast. He offered to tell
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the snake “ the news of God ” in return for some of the flesh, and, more especially, of the blood. (Abarea interpolated the remark that the snake was an enemy from the beginning.) The snake at first refused but, on being pressed, gave way, and the bird delivered his message in words to the following effect: “ People will grow old and die j but you, when you grow old, all you have to do is to crawl out of your skin, and you will be young again.” Consequently, men die and do not come back, but snakes shed their skins and renew their youth. Wak was very angry with the greedy and treacherous bird and cursed it with chronic indigestion, so that it knows no rest, but sits by itself in the trees, uttering its wailing cry, Wakatia — a — a — a!, which Abarea paraphrased: “ My God! heal me, for I am perishing! ”
Here we find the right message given, but to the wrong person — a variation I have not noted elsewhere. The idea that men could at one time renew their vitality by changing their skins is found among the Wachaga , 26 who relate that they might have continued to do so to this day but for the curiosity of two children. The parents, being about to accom- plish their annual change, and wishing to get the children out of the way, sent them down to the river to fetch water in a basket, charging them not to return unless they could bring it full. After many trials, they grew tired and came back, but their father heard them outside the door and sent them away, so next time they came quietly and, getting in before they were heard, saw their mother half in and half out of her skin, as a result of which she died, and every one else has done so ever since. Several different stories appear to be current among these people. In one, a woman’s child dies and she entreats her co-wife to carry the body out into the bush 27 for her and say: “ Go and return again like the Moon but the woman, being jealous, said: “ Go and be lost, but let the Moon go and return again.”
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Mama Oella. The Galla say that the ancestor of their oldest clan — the Uta Laficho — did so, and some, at least, of the other clans, perhaps all those who are not known to have branched off from older stocks within human memory.
It seems also to be held by some of the Baganda that Kintu, the first man, descended from heaven . 22 But this is clearly inconsistent with his story as generally related , 23 which shows that the denizens of Heaven knew no more about him than Mulungu knew of the two strange creatures found in the Chameleon’s fish-trap. It is merely said that Kintu and his cow “ came into this country ” {mu nsi muno ), whence or how is not explained, and found it vacant — there was nothing to eat. Kintu lived for some time on the products of the cow, till one day he saw several persons coming down from the sky. These were the sons of Heaven (Gulu) and their sister Nambi, who said to her brothers: “ Look at this man, where has he come from? ” Kintu, on being questioned, said: “ Neither do I know where I come from.” In the course of a short conversation, he impressed Nambi so favourably that she said to her brothers: Kintu murungi mmwagala, mmu- fumbirwe — “ Kintu is good, I like him — let me marry him.” They, not unnaturally, demurred, asking whether she were sure that he was really a human being ; whereto she re- plied: “I know he is a man — an animal does not build a house,” from which we may infer that Kintu had done so, though the fact has not been previously mentioned. She then turned to him and, with admirable directness, said : “ Kintu, I love you. Well, then, let me go home and tell my father that I have seen a man out in the jungle whom I should like to marry.” The sons of Heaven were by no means satisfied and told their father privately that Kintu did not eat ordinary food and was certainly a suspicious character. Gulu suggested that his sons should steal Kintu’s cow, “ and then we shall see whether he dies or not.” They did so, and Kintu subsisted
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precariously for a time on the bark of trees. Nambi, growing anxious about her lover, came down to look after him and brought him back with her to heaven. There he saw “ many people and many cattle and banana-trees and fowls and sheep and goats, and much of everything that is eaten.” (In short, the Platonic ideas or patterns of things which did not yet exist on earth, were all there in the heavens.) Gulu, when informed of Kintu’s arrival, determined to put him to the test. It is not quite clear whether he wished to find out if Kintu could really eat human — or celestial — food, or whether he wished to choke off an unwelcome connection by imposing impossible conditions. He ordered his slaves to make a house without a door and interned Kintu therein, together with ten thousand bundles 24 of mashed plantains ( emere ), the car- cases of a thousand bullocks, and a thousand gourds of banana- beer ( dmnjoenge ). If he failed to consume these viands, said Gulu, “ he is not really Kintu ; he is lying, and we will kill him.” The message actually given to Kintu, however, was less intransigeant than this. “ Guest Kintu, Gulu says, 1 Take our guest the emere and the meat and the beer; if he cannot eat them, he is not Kintu and he shall not have the cow he has come to fetch, and I will not give him my daughter.’ ”
Kintu thanked his host politely, but on being left alone was ready to despair, when, behold, he saw that the earth had opened in the middle of the house. He threw in the super- fluous food and the pit immediately closed up. In the same way he accomplished two other tasks set him — or rather they were accomplished for him, he could not tell how. There is nowhere any hint who or what is this friendly Power which takes his part against Gulu and is evidently stronger than the latter. Another remarkable point is the statement that Kintu prayed ( yegairira ) in his difficulties, though it is not said to whom. Having passed these three tests, he was next told that
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he should have his cow, if he could pick her out from the herds which Gulu ordered to be driven up — some twenty thousand beasts. Again Kintu was appalled by the magnitude of the task, when he heard a hornet buzzing at his ear. The hornet said: “ Watch me when I fly up — the cow on whose horn I shall settle is yours.” The hornet remained quiet, and Kintu said: “ Take away these cattle, my cow is not among them.” A second herd was driven up, and still the hornet gave no sign, but when the third instalment arrived, it flew off and settled on one of the cows. “ That is my cow,” said Kintu, going up to it and striking it with his stick. The hornet then flew off to a fine heifer. “ That is a calf of my cow,” said Kintu; and in the same way he claimed another calf. (This indicates that he must have been living on bark for a consider- able period.) Gulu laughed and said: “Kintu is a wonder! No one can take him in! And what he says is true. Well, let them call my daughter Nambi.” So he gave her to Kintu in marriage and sent them down to live on the earth, giving them also a fowl, a banana-tree, and the principal seeds and roots now cultivated by the Baganda . 25 He also warned them most particularly not to turn back, once they had started, even if they should find that they had forgotten anything. But, as this warning has to do with the entrance of death into the world, the way in which it was neglected, and the disastrous consequences which followed, it will be better related in the next chapter. The couple came down to earth “ here at Ma- gonga,” 26 set up housekeeping and began to cultivate. Nambi planted the banana-tree, which produced numerous other trees, and in course of time they had three children.
This Kintu, of course, is an entirely mythical figure, though we have reason to suppose that the Kintu from whom the Kings of Uganda trace their descent (every link in the pedigree is preserved) was a historical character, who invaded Uganda, coming from the north. In fact, as Roscoe points out, the
PLATE XIII
The Cattle-Troughs of Luganzu. (See Appendix, page 375-) After a photograph by Captain Philipps.
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traditions of some clans do not fit in with the legend as given above. Some say that Nambi was not the daughter of Heaven but a woman of the Lung-fish clan, who therefore was already living in the country at the time of Kintu’s invasion} and there are still in existence alleged relics of chiefs who were there before Kintu. In the version of the story given by Stanley , 27 he is represented as an ordinary human immigrant, coming from the north with his wife, and bringing with him the princi- pal domestic animals and plants. He disappeared from the earth after many years, disgusted by the wickedness of his descendants, and his successors sought for him in vain. He revealed himself to the twenty-second king, Mawanda, bid- ding him come to the meeting-place accompanied by no one but his mother. One of Mawanda’s councillors, unknown to the king, followed him into the forest. Kintu asked Mawanda why he had disobeyed his orders, and the latter, when he discovered the councillor, killed him. Kintu then disappeared and has never been seen since, but whether on account of the minister’s disobedience or the king’s deed of violence, does not seem clear. But we may perhaps see in the story a rationalised version of the legend which represents the Creator as leaving the earth, as in the cases of Mulungu and Bumba.
Another case of an ancestor who appears in an uninhabited country, without any indication of his having descended from heaven, is Vere, from whom the Buu tribe of the Pokomo trace their descent. He is sometimes spoken of as a preter- natural being “ without father or mother.” Other narrators content themselves with saying that no one knows where he came from or who his parents were. He wandered about alone in the forests of the Tana Valley, feeding on wild fruits and raw fish, for he had no knowledge of fire and no means of making it. After two years, he met with one Mitsotsozini, who showed him how to make fire by means of two sticks and cook his food. The remarkable part of this story is that Mitso-
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tsozini belonged to the hunter tribe of the Wasanye, who are generally considered less advanced in the arts of life than the Bantu. It may also indicate that the Wasanye — like the Dorobo, with whom, in fact, they have a good deal in com- mon — are supposed to have been there from the beginning of things. As, moreover, some of the Buu clans trace their descent from Mitsotsozini, as well as from Vere, we may infer that intermarriage took place at an early period between the Pokomo and the Wasanye, and a good many facts con- nected with the former tribe render this extremely probable . 28
Before concluding this chapter, I should like to refer to a very curious myth of the Nandi, interesting, not only in itself, but because of its points of contact with the traditions of races in the far South-west. Among the Masai folk-tales collected by Hollis is one called “ The Old Man and his Knee.” 29 It relates how an old man, living alone, was troubled with a swelling in his knee which he took for an abscess ; but, at the end of six months, as it did not burst, he cut it open and out came two children, a girl and a boy. The rest of the story proceeds very much on the lines of the Sesuto “ Tselane ” and other tales of cannibals, though without the usual happy ending. This, as it stands, is not a myth of origins, but an ordinary fairy-tale. The Nandi, however, have what is evi- dently the more primitive form of it . 30 “Amongst the Moi clan there is a tradition that the first Dorobo ” — again we find the Dorobo looked on as the earliest men — “ gave birth to a boy and a girl. His leg swelled up one day ... at length it burst, and a boy issued from the inner side of the calf, while a girl issued from the outer side. These two in course of time had children, who were the ancestors of all the people on earth.”
The same idea crops up among the Wakuluwe (between Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika) who hold that the first human pair came down from heaven, but did not produce offspring
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in the ordinary way. Ngulwe (the local equivalent of Mulungu) caused a child, known as Kanga Masala, to come out of the woman’s knee. 31
What lies behind this notion it is difficult to see; but it seems to reappear, distorted and half-forgotten, in Hottentot mythology. A good deal of controversy has raged round Tsui || Goab (or Tsuni || Goam), the “ Supreme Being of the Hottentots.” 32 This name was long ago interpreted as “ Wounded Knee,” with the added explanation that the deity (according to some, a famous warrior of old times) 33 had got his knee injured in a fight in which he overcame the evil being 1 1 Gaunab. Hahn, 34 who was anxious to prove that the Khoi- khoi (Hottentots) had a relatively high conception of a God, rejected this interpretation in 1881 (though he had previously advocated it) and leaned to the view that Tsuni || Goam means “ The Red Dawn,” thus placing this being in the category of Sky-gods. Kronlein, 35 one of the best authorities on the Hot- tentot language, translates the name as “ He who is entreated with difficulty” ( der miihsam zu Bittende ), which, though different enough from Hahn’s rendering, could be cited in support of a similar view. But a more recent writer, Dr. L. Schultze, 36 shows that Kronlein’s interpretation is inadmissible on linguistic grounds, and declares, on the ground of his own independent inquiries, for Hahn’s (earlier) derivation, viz., that tsu 1 1 goab is equivalent to “ wounded knee,” and is the designation of a hero who had his knee wounded in battle. Dr. Schultze does not mention the view advocated in Hahn’s later work.
This, of course, is a very different matter from the Nandi myth as related by Hollis, but we have already seen how the latter has been transformed by the Masai, who no longer seem to recognise it as part of their “ Genesis.” The Hottentots, while (as has been demonstrated by recent research into their language and customs) remotely connected with the Masai and
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other Hamitic and semi-Hamitic tribes of the North-east, have been so long separated from their congeners that they might easily have forgotten the original meaning of the Wounded Knee. Especially would this be the case where later generations find the story strange and perplexing, if not repel- lent, whereas the battle with || Gaunab readily commends itself to the intelligence.
The identity of Tsui || Goab presents some difficulties. It is impossible to keep him quite distinct from Haitsi-aibeb (about whom we shall have something to say in a later chapter, and to whom some of Tsui || Goab’s adventures are expressly attributed) and || Gurikhoisib, the First Ancestor — the soli- tary dweller in the wilderness, who reminds us of Vere. Hahn further identifies him with the thunder-cloud and the thunder: this is a question not to be decided here, but it may be in- teresting to give the story of Tsui || Goab, as related to Hahn by an old Nama, probably born not much later than 1770, as “ he had big grown-up children . . . in 1 8 1 1.” 37
“ Tsui || Goab was a great, powerful chief of the Khoikhoi; in fact, he was the first Khoikhoib, from whom all the Khoikhoi tribes took their origin. But Tsui 1 1 Goab was not his original name. This Tsui 1 1 Goab went to war with an- other chief, 1 1 Gaunab, because the latter always killed great numbers of Tsui 1 1 Goab’s people. In this fight, however, Tsui || Goab was repeatedly overpowered by || Gaunab, but in every battle the former grew stronger, and at last he was so strong and big that he easily destroyed || Gaunab by giving him one blow behind the ear. While || Gaunab was expiring, he gave his enemy a blow on the knee. Since that day the con- queror of || Gaunab received the name Tsui || Goab, 1 sore knee ’ or 1 wounded kneed Henceforth he could not walk properly because he was lame. He could do wonderful things, which no other man could do, because he was very wise. He could tell what would happen in future times. He died sev-
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eral times and several times he rose again. And whenever he came back to us, there were great f eastings and rejoicings. Milk was brought from every kraal, and fat cows and fat ewes were slaughtered. Tsui || Goab gave every man plenty of cattle and sheep, because he was very rich. He gives rain, he makes the clouds, he lives in the clouds, and he makes our cows and sheep fruitful.”
These repeated deaths and resurrections are a prominent feature, as we shall see, in the legend of Haitsi-aibeb, who also overcame an evil being named $ Gama $ Goub (according to Hahn “ almost identical with 1 1 Gaunab ”) by hitting him with a stone behind the ear.
These definitely evil powers are not common in African mythology, at least in that of the Bantu, who usually conceive of spirits as good or bad — perhaps one should rather say friendly or hostile — according to circumstances. Where they exist, as here, they are perhaps due to Hamitic influence. The apparent exceptions — Mbasi of the Wankonde, 38 and Mwawa of the Wakuluwe 39 — need to be carefully studied.
CHAPTER III
MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH
I N ALL parts of Bantu Africa we find the Chameleon associated with the entry of death into the world. Or, at any rate, the well-known legend, to be related presently, has been found in so many different parts of the area occupied by these tribes, that we may confidently expect to find it in others, where it has not yet come to light.
The Zulu version of the story, as related by Callaway , 1 is so well known, that I prefer to give, as a fairly typical speci- men, one quite independently recorded from Nyasaland : 2 “ God sent the Chameleon ( nadzikambe ) and the msalulu (a kind of lizard) and said: ‘You, Chameleon, when you come to men, tell them, “ When you die you will come back,” ’ and to the msalulu also he gave a message, saying: 1 Say, “ When men die they will pass away completely.” ’ Then, after the Chameleon had gone ahead, the Lizard followed after him and went along the road and found the Chameleon walking along delicately, going backwards and forwards.” Any one who has watched this creature, the almost affected daintiness of its movements, and the caution with which it always plants one foot firmly before lifting the next, will recognise the justice of the description. “ And he, the Msa- lulu, passed on very swiftly till he came to people, and he said: 4 When men die, they shall pass away completely . 1 And after a time the Chameleon arrived, coming in uselessly behind him, and said: 1 When men die they will return.’ But the people said, £ We have already heard the Msalulu’s mes- sage — “ When we die there will be an end to us,” and now
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he says, “ When we die we shall come back,” — what non- sense! ’ So people, when they see the Chameleon, put tobacco into his mouth that he may die, because, say they, £ You lin- gered on the road instead of hurrying on with your message and arriving first.’ For after all, it is better to come back than to be dead altogether.”
The Chameleon seems everywhere to be considered an un- lucky animal, and this special form of retribution by nicotine- poisoning is reported from the Konde country, 3 and from Delagoa Bay, 4 as well as from Nyasaland. One writer, however, 5 says that, in Likoma, the tobacco — whatever its effect — is intended as a reward, not a punishment, the idea being that at any rate the purpose was a good one, though the Chameleon failed, perhaps through natural incapacity, to carry it out. His name, in this particular part of Nyasa- land, is Gulumpambe, probably connected with Mpambe, one of the local names for “ God.” (The name used in the Shire Highlands is nadzikambe , of which I can offer no satis- factory explanation; that given in Scott’s Dictionary is scarcely admissible.)
The Giryama (British East Africa, to the north of Mom- basa) tell the story in much the same way, 6 with one rather important exception, to be considered presently. It is to be noted that in neither of these versions, nor in any other that I have been able to examine, is there any question of the second messenger being sent off to countermand the announcement made by the first, in consequence of the wickedness of man- kind which had become manifest after the departure of the Chameleon. This is sometimes stated by European writers, but I can find no hint of it in Callaway’s original Zulu texts.
In general, the versions of this story conform to one or other of two types. In one, the Creator despatches both messengers; in the other he sends only the Chameleon, though the blue-headed Gecko, or some other species of
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CHAPTER II
MYTHS OF ORIGINS
T HIS title seems preferable to that of “ Creation Myths,” for of the creation, as we understand it, we hear singu- larly little in Bantu legend. The earth, in most cases, seems to be taken for granted, as if it had existed from the beginning; and though, occasionally, we may hear of men being actually made, they more often just “ appear,” sometimes coming down from the sky, sometimes up out of the earth, sometimes with- out any attempt at explanation whence they came. Junod says: “ I believe that the origin of man preoccupies the Bantu mind more than the origin of the world as a whole.” 1 So much is this the case that one almost feels inclined to wonder whether, when we find little more than the bald statement that Katonda, or Mulungu, or Nyambe made the earth, the sun, etc., this may not be merely the improvised answer to the question of some European pressing for information on a subject which had never previously occurred to his listeners. Duff Macdon- ald says : 2 “ The existence of the world itself is accepted as a fact not to be explained. But there are legends that explain the introduction of the sun, moon, and stars, clouds and rain, as also how mountains and rivers appeared on the scene.” The Yao divinity Mtanga (by some said to be the same as Mulungu) is described as pressing up the surface of the earth into mountain ridges and excavating rivers, and “ putting the country right.” 3 It existed already and only needed shaping; moreover, the scene of Mtanga’s activities seems to be confined to the Yao country — the original mountain home of the tribe. Probably, when they had started on their migrations and reached the
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Chilwa plain, they felt the need of accounting for the differ- ence.
The Bushongo 4 have something more like a genuine cre- ation legend, of a very peculiar kind. I have not met with its parallel elsewhere in Africa. Bumba, the Creator, who is described as a gigantic white being in human form, existed alone in the beginning, in a universe where there was nothing but water. Some touches in this narrative, apart from the su- preme act of creation, are surprisingly suggestive of Genesis I, and but for the fact that the Bushongo were entirely un- touched by missionary influence, and that Mr. Torday was to an unusual degree independent of interpreters, one might feel somewhat suspicious. As it is, one may perhaps draw the moral that, without accepting the conclusions which have been or might be based on them, we need not be too incredulous as to the genuineness of Merker’s Masai traditions.
Bumba, say the Bushongo, one day felt severe internal pains and, as a consequence, “ vomited up the sun, moon, and stars,” thus giving light to the world. As the sun’s rays dried up the water, sandbanks began to appear above its surface, but there was no life anywhere. Bumba then, in the same manner, produced eight living creatures which, in their turn, gave rise, with some exceptions, to all the rest. These were, the leopard, the crested eagle, the crocodile, a small fish (the parent of all other fish), the tortoise, the lightning (a beast like a black leopard), the white heron, a beetle, and the goat. He then produced men. Whether these included the three sons who now appear on the scene is not stated. The animals undertook to people the world, but it is not quite clear on what principle they did so; the goat produced all horned beasts, the beetle all insects, the crocodile all serpents and the iguana, the white heron all birds except the kite. Then Bumba’s sons took a hand. One produced white ants, which, apparently, are not counted as insects, and died in the effort; the second a plant,
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from which all vegetable life has sprung ; and the third tried to bring forth new creatures, but the only result was the kite. Why the kite should thus be set apart from all other birds is not explained.
The Bushongo, according to their own tradition, came from the far north, probably from the region of Lake Chad, and within historical times. This might account for the exceptional character of much in the above legend. It is true that the name of Bumba (who is not only Creator but First Ancestor, whose direct descendants, the reigning chiefs, have preserved every link in their genealogy) is found among other tribes, such as the Baila. But the name is Bantu, and the Bushongo brought with them from the north a strange archaic, non-Bantu lan- guage which has nearly, if not quite gone out of use.
Coming now to the conception of origin from trees or plants, we may link together the legends of the Herero, Zulus, and other tribes south of the Zambezi. I have not definitely traced it much farther north, unless we can count the belief of the Bangongo in the Kasai country 5 that the Batwa pygmies came out of trees, and a vague account e which I was, unfor- tunately, never able to check or get further light on, of some sacred tree from which the Wasanye in East Africa deduce their origin.
The Zulus say: “ It is said that we men came out of a bed of reeds, where we had our origin.” 7 Some content them- selves with this general statement, others say that it was Un- kulunkulu who “ had his origin in a valley where there was a reed-bed ( umhlanga ) here on the earth, and men sprang from Unkulunkulu by generation. All things as well as Unkulunkulu sprang from a bed of reeds — everything, both animals and corn, everything coming into being with Unku- lunkulu.”
Elsewhere, the word used is uhlan ga* a single reed (as distinguished from umhlanga , a reed-bed). Callaway and
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Colenso 9 both thought that these words are not to be taken in their literal meaning, but as referring to some u Primal Source of Being.” Yet the former admits that the native who gave the account “ clearly understood by it a reed,” 10 while adding that “ one cannot avoid believing that he did not under- stand the import of the tradition.” But comparison with the traditions of other tribes suggests that this, or something like it, was really the primitive belief, and that uhlanga came to mean “ source ” or “ origin ” because it was thought that mankind had sprung from a reed. The Basuto certainly thought so, and used to commemorate the belief by sticking a reed (or bunch of reeds) into the thatch of a hut where a child had been born . 11 The Thonga vary between the reed ( Uhlanga ) and the reed-bed ( nhlanga ): in the first version “ one man and one woman suddenly came out from one reed, which exploded, and there they were! ” In the second, “ men of different tribes emerged from a marsh of reeds, each tribe already having its peculiar costume, implements, and cus- toms.” 12
The Herero believe in a sacred tree from which their earliest ancestors sprang. It is called Omumborombonga and has been identified by botanists as Combretum primigenum. The actual tree which produced the human race is supposed to be still in existence, in the “ Kaoko veld,” west of the Ndonga country and south of the Kunene River. Beiderbecke 13 speaks almost as if he had seen it. “ There is nothing particular in the tree, unless it may be its looking old and antediluvian. The Ovaherero, in passing it, bow themselves reverently, holding in the hand a bunch of green twigs which they stick into it, or otherwise throw down at the foot. They also enter into a conversation with the tree, giving the answers themselves in a somewhat altered voice.” This presumably refers to the original tree: a note added by another hand tells that the Herero honoured all trees of the same species, saluting them
' ? ? •
PLATE XII
The Footprints of the First Man in Ruanda. (See Appendix, page 375.) After a photograph by Captain Philipps.
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with the words: Tate Mukuru , uzera! “ Father Mukuru, thou art holy,” or perhaps rather “ tabu.” “ Formerly the Ova- herero had such a reverence for the tree that they would not even sit down in its shade.”
But it should be noted that only the Herero themselves and their cattle sprang from the sacred Omumborombonga. The “ Hill-Damara,” a previous population supposed to be Bantu by race, though speaking a Hottentot dialect, came out of a rock, together with goats, sheep and baboons. Perhaps a double racial tradition explains the divergent accounts given by the Basutoj 14 the one most generally accepted is that men sprang from a reed-bed, but some say that they issued (to- gether with the animals) from a cave. The Anyanja believe that the first men came out of a hole in the ground at a place called Kapirimtiya, where their footprints and those of the animals are still to be seen impressed on the rock. This is said to be on a hill, or, according to some, an island in a lake, somewhere west of Lake Nyasa. A correspondent of Life and Work (the Blantyre Mission Magazine) 15 was shown the al- leged site of this event in the Wemba country, “ a conglome- rate rock, showing what the natives call footprints of a man, a child, a zebra, a horse, and a dog.” The horse, if not the re- sult of a misunderstanding, must be a comparatively recent addition. The legend may indicate that here or hereabouts was a centre of dispersion for the Nyanja, Wemba, and perhaps some other tribes 5 also it looks as if it had been inherited from that older stratum of the population which, as we have seen, was most probably absorbed. The Hill-Damara, who likewise came out of a rock, may represent the mingling of the advance guard of the Bantu immigrants with some Bushman tribe. We know this to have happened in the case of the Le- ghoya 16 and some other Bechwana clans, and in the absence of direct proof I should think it probable that these clans were precisely those who did not hold the theory of the reed origin.
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Stow, however, says that in all Bantu myths of the origin of man — whether deriving him from the split reed or the fissure of a rock — the Bushmen are disregarded or taken for granted as existing already. Some of these “ traditions state that when their forefathers migrated to the south, they found the land without inhabitants, so that only the wild game and the Bushmen were living in it — evidently classing . . . them together as wild animals.” 17
This reminds us of the Masai , 18 who say that “ when God came to prepare the world, he found there a Dorobo, an ele- phant and a serpent.” The Dorobo are a hunting tribe, who must have occupied the country before the Masai, and are now more or less in the position of vassals or serfs to them. The fact that not only the Dorobo but the elephant and the serpent are put on a different level from the rest of creation is highly curious. We are not told what kind of serpent this was, but it is clear that he was not, at any rate, intentionally harmful. The three lived together for some time and the Do- robo, by what means we do not learn, became possessed of a cow. After a time the Dorobo picked a quarrel with the ser- pent, whose breath, he said, affected him with a most unpleas- ant irritation of the skin. The poor serpent apologised very humbly, saying: “ Oh, my father, I do not blow my bad breath over you on purpose ”; but the Dorobo, though he said nothing at the time, waited his opportunity and killed the serpent with a club. The elephant, missing him, asked where the “ thin one ” was. The Dorobo denied all knowledge of him; but the elephant, who had no doubt come to her own conclusions as to his character, was not deceived. By and by, the elephant pro- duced a calf. The rains were now over, and all the pools had dried up, except in one place, where the Dorobo took his cow every day to drink. The elephant, too, used to come to this pool and, after drinking, lie down in the water, stirring up the bottom, so that the Dorobo, when he came, was much annoyed
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to find the water very muddy. He appears to have said nothing, but bided his time, till one day he made an arrow and shot the elephant. The young elephant, finding itself thus orphaned, said: “ The Dorobo is bad. I will not stop with him any longer. He first of all killed the snake, and now he has killed mother. I will go away and not live with him again.” So the young elephant went to another country, where he met a Masai, and, in answer to his questions, told him what had happened. The Masai seems to have been impressed by the Dorobo’s qualities, for he said: “ Let us go there ; I should like to see him.” They went and found the Dorobo’s hut and saw that God had overturned it, so that the open door faced the sky. This part of the story calls for cross-examination, as, on the face of it, one would suppose this state of things to be a mark of displeasure at the Dorobo’s previous conduct, but, if so, it hardly seems consistent with what follows. For we hear, without comment or explanation, that Ngai called the Dorobo and said to him: “ I wish you to come to-morrow morning, for I have something to tell you.” The Masai overheard this and played the trick which Jacob played on Esau by being on the spot first. But it is somewhat disconcerting to find that, when “ he went and said to God 1 1 have come,’ ” Ngai does not appear to have noticed the difference, but went on giving him the instructions intended for the Dorobo. He was to build a large cattle-kraal and then go out into the forest till he found a lean calf, which he was to bring home and slaughter, afterwards burning the meat. Then he was to go into his hut — the Dorobo’s hut of course, though we do not hear whether it had been restored to its normal position — and not be startled or cry out, whatever he might hear. He did as he was told and waited in the hut till he heard a sound like thunder. Ngai let down a strip of hide from the sky, and down this cattle began to descend into the kraal. They kept on com- ing till the kraal was full and the animals were so crowded
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that they began to break down the hut. The Masai could not keep back an exclamation of astonishment, and came out to find that the lariat had been cut and no more cattle were coming down. Ngai asked him if he had enough, for he should certainly get no more, as he would have done, had he been able to hold his tongue.
This is the story told to account for the fact that the Masai have cattle and the Dorobo have none. “ Nowadays,” says the narrator, “ if cattle are seen in the possession of Bantu tribes, it is presumed that they have been stolen or found, and the Masai say , 1 These are our animals, let us go and take them, for God in olden days gave us all the cattle upon earth.’ ”
Another version of this myth says nothing of the Dorobo’s previous misdoings, and only relates how the Masai cheated him out of the cattle, very much as shown above. But there is one significant addition at the end, which may involve a refer- ence to the earlier part of the story: “ After this the Dorobo shot away the cord by which the cattle had descended, and God moved and went jar ojf .”
Are we to take this as implying — what perhaps was no longer clear to the narrator himself — that the Dorobo’s treatment of his fellow-creatures had made the earth impos- sible as a residence for Ngai? If so, we are reminded of what the Yaos say about Mulungu. It is true we are not told that Ngai lived on the earth, but he seems at any rate to have oc- cupied a near and comparatively accessible part of heaven.
This differs considerably from the legend mentioned by Irle , 19 explaining how the Herero got the cattle which the Nama spend their lives — or did, not so very long ago — in “ lifting ” from them. It appears that some of the first human beings quarrelled over the skin of the first ox slaughtered for food. The colour of their descendants was determined by the distribution of the meat: the ancestors of the Hereros ate the liver, so their children were black; the Nama are red because
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their fathers took the lungs and the blood. The Nandi legend of origins is very similar to the Masai one, but there are some interesting points of difference. In general, we find that when the Masai and Nandi possess different versions of the same story, the latter seem to have the more primitive form. In this case, too, God found the earth tenanted by the Dorobo and the elephant , 20 but the third in the partnership was the Thunder, not the serpent. The Thunder distrusted the Dorobo almost from the beginning, because, when lying down, he could turn over without getting up, which neither the elephant nor, it appears, the Thunder, was able to do. The elephant only laughed at the Thunder’s warning, and the latter retreated into the sky, where he has remained ever since. The Dorobo then remarked: “The person I was afraid of has fled; I do not mind the elephant,” and at once proceeded to shoot him with a poisoned arrow. The unfortunate ele- phant, too late, called upon the Thunder to help him and take him up, but received the unfeeling answer: “ Die by yourself,” with the addition of, “ I told you so,” or words to that effect. So he was hit by a second arrow, and died, and the Dorobo “ became great in all the countries.”
One wonders whether these stories reflect some dim notion that the elephant belongs to the older world ; that he was not merely existing on the earth before man appeared there, but that he is the survivor of an extinct order. It is possible, too, that others of the earlier vertebrates — giant saurians and cetaceans — may have lingered on in Africa after the coming of man, and that some memory of them survives in the figures made by the Anyanja and Yaos for their unyago ceremonies , 21 and in the reports, persistent, but difficult to substantiate, of monstrous fish believed to inhabit the depths of the Great Lakes.
Other tribes believe that the first man, or the first pair, descended from the sky, like the Peruvian Manco Capac and
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Ashantis, had been to bring Leza back, for the narrator goes on to say: “ They had formerly lived with Leza under a great tree, and here they performed their worship (after his depar- ture? ); they used to bring thither great numbers of goats and sheep so that Leza might have food. . . . One day, Leza met a man under this tree and said to him, 1 Where do you come from? ’ The man answered, £ I am bringing four goats.’ Leza said to him, c Go back to the village and say, “ Leza says: when you see a great cloud of dust, you will know that it is Leza.” ’ One day they saw a column of dust which was fol- lowed by a great hurricane. The people gathered in the place of assembly. Leza arrived and stood under a tree, and they heard him say, £ You must pay honour to my house (as repre- senting me?). As for me, you will never see me again — I am going away now.’ ”
Still, when people see shooting stars, they utter cries and say that it is their chief, Leza, who is coming to see how his children on earth are getting on. If this refers to human beings, we have a hint of the “ All-Father ”$ and, in fact, the Wankonde 34 (at the north end of Lake Nyasa) address their Supreme God, Mbamba or Kiara, as “ Father.” Mbamba is of human form, “ white and shining,” and he, too, lives “ above the sky.” Some kind of worship is paid to Leza by the Basubiya, but M. Jacottet thinks this — or most of it — is really directed to the ancestors, while Leza (or Nyambe) most probably represents the sun. The Baluyi expressly assert this of Nyambe , 35 and they are in the habit of saluting the ris- ing sun with shouts of, “ Mangwe! Mangwe! our king! ” But the same people may think of him sometimes as the one, some- times as the other; and it is not difficult to believe that the “All-Father ” idea might have grown out of either — or both — of these notions.
The Yao myth of Mulungu 36 is in many ways very sugges- tive. “ At first there were not people, but God and beasts,”
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Later on, the beasts are repeatedly called “ Mulungu’s people,” as though some special relation existed between them and him j yet he is not said to have made them. The Chame- leon, who seems to have been in the habit of setting fish- traps — like the local population to-day — one morning found a man and woman in one of these. He took them to Mu- lungu who “ was staying down here before he went away to heaven,” and who was as much perplexed by the strange creatures as he, but advised him to “ place them there, they will grow,” and “ man then grew, both the male and female.” All the beasts and birds were called together to look at them, but they too had nothing to say. The next day the new beings were seen making fire by drilling with a stick; they then killed a buffalo which they cooked and ate. “ And they kept eating all the beasts in this way,” and finally set the Bush on fire as well. “ Again Mulungu came, saying, £ Chameleon, I told you that you introduced puzzling beings on the earth here. See now, my people are finished. Now, how shall I act? ’ They actually saw the bush at their verandah burning with fire,” and had to run for it. “ The Chameleon ran for a tree. Mulungu was on the ground, and he said ( 1 cannot climb a tree! ’ Then Mulungu set off and went to call the Spider. The Spider went on high and returned again, and said, 1 1 have gone on high nicely. You, now, Mulungu, go on high.’ Mu- lungu then went with the Spider on high. And he said , 1 When they die, let them come on high here.’ ”
That is, as the narrator explains, men are to go and be slaves to God “ because they ate his people here below.” In other words, Mulungu was driven from the earth because of man’s cruelty to the animals.
One cannot help thinking — though of course the cases are in no way parallel — of the account given to Mr. Orpen 37 by Qing of the Bushman god Cagn: “ Cagn made all things and we pray to him. At first he was very good and nice, but he
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got spoilt through fighting so many things. . . . We do not know where he is, but the elands know. Have you not hunted and heard his cry when the elands suddenly run to his call? ” And the prayer to him is, “ O Cagn, O Cagn, are we not your children? Do you not see our hunger? Give us food! ” There is something very beautiful about this, and it is not sur- prising that it should have inspired one of Andrew Lang’s finest sonnets.
It seems pretty well established that Cagn ( | kaggen in Dr. Bleek’s orthography) was originally the Mantis and therefore possibly a totem-god, but cela n'empeche pas , as we shall so often have occasion to notice. There is nothing to prevent the higher conception growing out of the lower.
The Spider’s agency is noteworthy because, wherever he appears in Bantu folklore (except in some Duala tales), it is in this capacity of intermediary between heaven and earth — a very different character from the crafty and malignant Anansi of the Gold Coast. In a Congo story he brings down the heavenly fire, with the help of the Tortoise, the Woodpecker, the Rat and the Sand-fly: all have a share in carrying out the enterprise, but it is the Spider who takes them up to the sky . 38
The idea of a rope by which one could climb up to heaven, whether originally suggested or not by the spider swinging his thread, is found in a very old Zulu saying quoted by Calla- way : 39 “ Who can plait a rope for ascending, that he may go to heaven? ”
This seems to imply that the thing is utterly impossible, yet we find King Senzangakona (Tshaka’s father) credited with this very feat in an isihongo, which tells how he escaped in this way from the (presumably hostile) “ spirits of the house of Mageba.”
An old Thonga chant 40 expresses the same hopeless longing: “Ah! if I had but a rope! I would go up to the heavens and be at rest ! ”
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Thonga warriors used to shout to their enemies before a battle: “ Get ready your ropes and climb up to heaven! ” mean- ing, of course, “ there is no other way by which you can escape us.” In a story given by Junod under the title “ La Route du Ciel,” 41 a young girl who fears her mother’s anger is described as “ going away and climbing a rope to get to heaven,” as if this were the most natural proceeding in the world.
The same object is sometimes attained by climbing a tree. In the Zulu tale of “ The Girl and the Cannibals,” 42 a brother and sister, escaping from these amazimu , climbed a tree and “ saw a very beautiful country. They found a very beautiful house there 5 that house was green, and the floor was bur- nished. . . . But the earth they saw was at a great distance below them; they were no longer able to go down to it, for they feared the cannibals, thinking they saw them going about on the earth and seeking for food.” They found cattle and, it would seem, everything else that they wanted; they slaugh- tered an ox, ate the meat and made the hide into a rope, with which they drew up one of the cannibals — either fearing he might obstruct their return to earth, or simply for the sake of revenge, and “ did him in ” in the most callous fashion. They subsequently returned home by means of the rope.
The Wakonyingo — dwarfs or elves supposed to live on the top of Kilimanjaro — are said by the Wachaga to have ladders by which they can reach the sky from the summit. 43
Mrile, a hero of the same country, having a grievance against his family, sat down on his stool and sang incantations, and the stool rose into heaven with him. There he found a world much like the one he had left. He went on and came to some people who were hoeing. He greeted them, and asked them the way to the kraal of the Moon. 44 They told him to go on till he found some people cutting wood, and ask again. He did so and the wood-cutters directed him how to reach
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some men digging an irrigation-trench. These again sent him on to some people who were weeding, and these to a place where they were gathering in the crops. (One version says that all these in turn asked him to help them, which he oblig- ingly did.) The reapers told him to go on till he came to a place where the road divided. “If you take the lower road, you will come to people sitting at a meal.” He went on and was hospitably welcomed by them, but found that the food offered him was raw. So he took out his fire-sticks and showed them how to make fire and cook their food. They were so delighted that they presented him with large numbers of cattle and goats, and he returned home in triumph. It is a remarkable point, to which I know no parallel elsewhere, that the Heaven-dwellers should be unacquainted with the use of fire, though in Polynesia this is told of the people of the under- world . 45
The same people have a very curious legend of a Heaven- tree. A girl named Kichalundu went out to cut grass and was swallowed up in a bog. Her companions heard her voice growing fainter and fainter, as she sank through the three suc- cessive realms of the Dead — we shall come back to these in a later chapter — till at last all was silent. By and by, a tree sprang up on this spot, and kept growing till it reached the sky. The herd-boys used to drive their cattle into its shade and play about in the branches. One day, two 1 of them climbed higher than the rest, quite out of sight. Their companions called to them to come back but they refused, saying, “ We are going up to the sky — to Wuhuu, the world above! ” — and they were never seen again. People say that they went on beyond the Wahuu (the Heaven-clan) to the Waranjui, who live above the sky. Perhaps the human dwellers on “ middle earth ” are the first of the series to which these two orders of beings belong — the three corresponding to the three orders of ghosts recognised by the Wachaga.
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Two other remarkable traditions 46 of heaven-dwellers be- long to the same district. A man and woman — said to be the ancestors of the existing Molama clan — came down from the sky and alighted on a certain hill. They said they had been sent down by Ruwa and were found to have tails, which they were afterwards induced to cut off. The other story concerns a being called Mrule (he appears to be quite distinct from Mrile or Nrile), who also came down from heaven and went first to the Masai, afterwards to the Wachaga in the Shira dis- trict. He had only one leg, so suggesting the half-men we shall discuss later on, and the people, being frightened by his strange appearance, refused to take him in or give him food. So he returned to heaven, and they regretted their unkindness too late. 47
We have referred to a Ronga tale about the “ Road to Heaven,” 48 which is of interest in this connection. It is one of a very wide-spread group of stories, most of which, however, have their scenes laid in the underground regions of the dead and not in the country above the sky. They exhibit an unmis- takable relationship to the European tales of which we may take Grimm’s “ Frau Holle ” as the type, but the idea is so likely to occur spontaneously anywhere, that there seems no need to resort to any hypothesis of diffusion, or, at any rate, of introduction from Europe. Fulleborn 49 mentions a tale of this type from the Konde country, which he characterises as “ psy- chologisch recht unverstandlich ” — probably because the ver- sion before him was corrupt, or imperfect in its details. Junod’s “ La Route du Ciel,” is evidently very far from being a primitive version 5 in fact, the reason for one of the most important incidents has been entirely lost sight of. It will therefore be better to begin with the variant given by Duff Macdonald under the title “ The Three Women,” 60 which itself is not perfectly clear throughout, and elucidate its diffi- cult points by comparison with others.
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“ There were three Women with their children, and they went to the water. When they had reached it, one of them was cheated by her companions, who said, ‘ Throw your child into the water, we have thrown our children into the water.’ But they had hidden their children under a tree.”
There seems no point in this beyond a senseless and heartless practical joke, but a Chaga tale , 61 which begins quite differ- ently, probably suggests the right version of the incident. A chief’s son fetching home his bride puts her into a large honey- barrel and carries her over the hills on his back. On the way she hears the lowing of her father’s cattle and asks him to let her out, so that she may take a last look at them. While she is gone, a certain bird called kmndovo gets into the honey- barrel in her place, and the bridegroom, being unable to see behind him, thinks the girl has returned and fastens down the lid. The story, however, does not proceed on the usual lines of the “ False Bride ” incident, for the real bride is reinstated without difficulty, and the kmndovo (metamorphosed or not, for we have the usual vagueness about such matters) is rele- gated to the position of a secondary wife. When the head- wife has a child, the jealous kmndovo fabricates a pretended one out of a banana-stalk and throws it into a pool, telling the mother that by so doing she will get it back stronger and more beautiful. The motive for inducing the mother to drown her child is here quite clear.
“ So their companion threw her child into the water and a crocodile swallowed it. Then her companions began to laugh at her and said, ‘ We were only cheating you! ’ ” The mother then u climbed a tree and said ‘ I want to go on high,’ and the tree grew much and reached upwards.” She does not here say that she wants to find the dwelling-place of Mulungu, but this appears later. She meets some leopards who ask her where she is going, and she tells them, “ I want my child; my com- panions cheated me and said ‘ Throw your child into the
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water.’ ” The leopards directed her on to certain creatures called nsenzi (which Dr. Macdonald takes to be birds), and they to the Mazomba (Masomba? — large fishes), who said, “ What do you want, my girl? ” “ The girl said, £ 1 want to know the way.’ The Mazomba said, ‘Where to?’ The girl said, £ The way to Mulungu.’ The Mazomba said, £ Well, be strong in your heart.’ The girl said, £ Yes, Masters, I under- stand.’ ”
The woman is not asked to render any services to those she meets, but it is evident from what follows, that her civil an- swers to the leopards and the other creatures are counted to her for righteousness. When she reaches “ the village of Mu- lungu ” and tells her story, Mulungu calls the crocodile and restores her child. “ The girl received the child and went down ” — we are not told how — “ to her mother.” Her companions, when they heard what had happened, at once threw their babies into the water and climbed the tree. They gave impertinent answers to the leopards, nsenzi y and Ma- zomba and even abused them.
“ Then they came to Mulungu. He 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, say- ing ££ 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.’ They took the bottle, which made a report like a gun, and the girls both died.”
In ££ La Route du Ciel,” the opening, as we have seen, is quite different: it is a young girl, afraid of being scolded for breaking her water-jar, who climbs a rope to take refuge in the sky. Nothing is said about a baby, actual or prospective, and the girl’s announcement, on reaching ££ the village of Heaven ” — ££ I have come to look for a child,” is consequently somewhat
PLATE XI
The Woman who found the Way to Mulungu
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perplexing. It becomes quite intelligible, however, on compar- ison with the Yao variant, which undoubtedly represents the older form. We might suppose the beginning to have been altered in order to point a moral for the benefit of wilful and ill-behaved daughters, but the world-wide recurrence of the motive is against this, and the probability is that two different tales have — perhaps purposely — here been combined into one. The final catastrophe is very much alike in both. What makes this view more probable is that the usual story of the half-sisters, of whom the ill-treated one is kind and helpful and gets rewarded, while the spoilt and petted one acts in the opposite way and comes to grief, is always, more or less con- sciously, connected, not with the sky above, but with the realm of the dead beneath. The girl in the original “ Frau Holle ” story falls into the well; the wife in the Chaga tale (where the combination of incidents is reversed) throws herself into the pool where her baby has been drowned, and both come to what is really, if not avowedly, the country of the ghosts. And the recollection of this persists, even when the exact nature of the journey has been forgotten. In the Sierra Leone variant , 52 the stepmother sends the child to the “ Devil,” to get the rice- stick washed, and the mysterious city where the Hausa place the “ Menders of Men,” 53 seems to point in the same direction. In the other Hausa variant , 54 “ How the Ill-treated Maiden became Rich,” the girls do not apparently leave the world of the living j but their goal, the River Bagajun, is presided over by a witch, and, on their way to it, they pass rivers of sour milk and honey. This may be some distorted recollection of a Hindu myth refracted through Islam, or may possibly belong to an older indigenous stratum of thought.
In the chapter on “ The Little People ” I shall quote a Chaga story 55 which belongs to the same type as these, but substitutes the top of Kilimanjaro for the sky, and the Wa- konyingo dwarfs for the Heaven-people. A remarkable point
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is that, as the latter seem, in the Chaga view, to be unac- quainted with the use of fire, the hero in this case instructs the Wakonyingo in protective magic. It is curious to compare this with the Pokomo tradition which represents the tribal ancestor as getting the knowledge of fire from a member of the aborig- inal race, the Wasanye. Some other tales of the kind will be more suitably discussed in connection with Ancestral Ghosts and the Abode of the Dead.
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notice this) that in its original form this myth was an attempt to explain how Heaven and Earth came to be separated, they having been at first (as the Polynesians also believe) in close contact. There are traces of this myth elsewhere, as in the belief of the Giryama 3 that all things proceeded from the mar- riage of Heaven and Earth, or in the Herero legend recorded by Irle , 4 which we shall refer to again in the next chapter. But here Heaven is said to have been close to the Earth after a great flood — it is not stated whether this had always been so or was a consequence of the deluge, nor is it clear whether they were actually in contact and needing to be separated ; the great anxiety of the Ovakuru (ancestral spirits) seems to have been lest men should climb into Heaven. This may possibly — though Irle thinks the flood story is a genuine native one — be an echo of missionary teaching. Otherwise, the conception in its crude form does not appear to be common in Africa, but Mr. Dennett thinks the idea of the Heaven-Father and the Earth-Mother underlies the ancient religion of the Congo people . 5
This is the Ashanti myth above referred to, literally trans- lated by Mr. Rattray : 6 “Long, long ago, Onyankopong lived on earth, or at least was very near to us. Now there was a certain old woman who used to pound her fufu (mashed yams, etc.), and the pestle used constantly to knock up against Onyankopong (who was not then high up in the sky). So Onyankopong said to the old woman, ‘Why do you always do so to me? Because of what you are doing, I am going to take myself away up into the sky.’ And of a truth he did so. . . . But now, since people could no longer approach near to Onyankopong, that old woman told her children to search for all the mortars they could find and bring them, and pile one on top of another, till they reached to where Onyan- kopong was. And so her children did so and piled up many mortars, one on top of another, till there remained but one to
PLATE IX
1. The Baobab at Kurawa, the sacred tree of the Galla.
2. Galla huts at Kurawa.
After photographs by Prof. A. Werner.
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reach to Onyankopong. Now, since they could not get the one required anywhere, their grandmother — that is, the old woman — told her children saying: £ Take one out from the bottom and put it on top to make them reach.’ So her children removed a single one, and all rolled and fell to the ground, causing the death of many people.”
This incident, of the High God retreating into the sky after sojourning for a time on earth, recurs in many different parts of Africa. Sometimes, but not always, the reason given is the wickedness of mankind. The Bushongo of the Kasai country 7 have a High God, Bumba, who, after completing the creation, prescribing tabus to mankind, and appointing rulers over them, retired to Heaven, and thenceforth only communicated his will, from time to time, in dreams and visions.
It is by no means always the case that the High God is also the Creator; we shall return to Bumba in the following chapter.
The name Jambi is used by some divisions of the same people, and various forms of this name are widely distributed through the south-western part of Africa. The Herero speak of Ndyambi Karunga 8 as distinct from the ancestral ghosts, — “ he is in heaven above and not in the graves.” Nzambi is, in Angola , 9 “ the name of one great, invisible God, who made all things and controls all things. . . . Tradition says men have offended him, and he has withdrawn his affection from them.” Among the Lower Congo people, Nzambi Mpungu means “ what we should call the Creator,” 10 but Nzambi-si is the Earth-Mother. Nzambi Mpungu is described in Fiote mythology as “ a human being — a naked man.” But this, in Mr. Dennett’s opinion, is an idea of late growth, suggested by the crucifixes and religious pictures imported by Romanist missionaries . 11
Mulungu is a name which, in several easily-recognisable cognate forms, can be traced from the Tana to Mozambique.
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From the Yaos (to whom, perhaps, it originally belonged), it has spread eastward to the Anyanja and other tribes, wholly or partly superseding the names of Mpambe, Chiuta, and Leza. Leza (Reza, Rezha, etc.) belongs to a group of tribes in the centre of the continent — the Luba, Bemba, Subiya, Ila, and several others. Leza is sometimes identified with the light- ning or the rain; but Mr. E. W. Smith 12 says of the Baila: “ it is not plain that they regard rain and God as one and the same. . . . Leza is closely identified with nature, but, as Lubumba, the Creator, he is above nature, and, as Chilenga, he is regarded as the grand institutor of custom.”
The Anyanja call the rainbow Uta wa Leza , “ the Bow of Leza.”
Mulungu is a name with several perplexing connotations. The Rev. Duff Macdonald 13 and Dr. Hetherwick 14 have both discussed the subject at some length. Certainly, as used by some natives, it seems to express the idea of a High God dwell- ing in the heavens. I have myself heard a native woman say of the thunder, Mulungu anena — “ Mulungu is speaking ”; and on two occasions, persons who had recently died were said to have “ gone to Mulungu.” In Nyasaland I never heard any expressions indicating that Mulungu might be the actual sky; but I did once hear it said that the offerings made to the manes of a deceased chief were “ for Mulungu.”
I find, however, that the Giryama have the word, and with them its primary meaning seems to be the sky, though it is also used in the sense of “ God.”
It does not seem possible that Mulungu can be, as Bleek 15 thought, the same word as the Zulu Unkulunkulu: the latter is admittedly derived from the root kulu> which I cannot by any process of sound-shifting, get out of Mulungu, even with the help of the Mulungulu from Inhambane 16 on which Bleek relied. I fail to find any later authority for this word, which is presumably meant to be Chopi — the nearest one gets to it
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in any recent books is Nungungulu. On the other hand, Mu- lungu is clearly the same as the Zulu umlungu, which, what- ever may have been its original sense, now means u a white man,” and no doubt indicates that the first Europeans were taken for supernatural beings. It may be worth noticing that the languages which use the word in this sense do not possess “ Mulungu ” as a divine name. This is the case with the Baronga of Delagoa Bay, who, however, believe that certain small apparitions called Baiun gwana (plural diminutive of Mulungu ) sometimes descend from the sky during thunder- storms. 17 These same people use the word Tilo , “ heaven,” to mean, not merely the visible sky but “a spiritual principle which plays a considerable part in the religious conceptions of the tribe.” 18 Heaven is thought of as a place: one woman said to M. Junod: “ Before you came to teach us that there is an All- Good Being, a Father in Heaven, we already knew there was a Heaven, but we did not know there was any one in it.” 19 Another convert, however, said: “Our fathers all believed that life existed in Heaven.” But, adds M. Junod: 20 “ Tilo is something more than a place. It is a power which acts and manifests itself in various ways. It is sometimes called hosi ( c chief ’ or £ lord ’) . . . but is generally regarded as something entirely impersonal.” They say: “ It is Heaven which kills and makes alive.” It is associated with cosmic phenomena, especially such as are more or less abnormal and unexpected, such as storms and lightning 5 with the birth of twins, which is held to be something out of the course of na- ture ; and with convulsions in infants — I suppose because these seizures are sudden and unaccountable. The complaint is hence called tilo , and, curiously enough, the Swahili call it “ the bird,” believing it to be caused by an owl, that universal bird of ill-omen. The idea of the sky as a place accessible to human beings enters into many folk-tales, and we shall recur to it later on.
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We have mentioned the name of Unkulunkulu as used by the Zulus. It sometimes appears to denote a Spiritual Power and, like Mulungu, has been adopted by native Christians as the word for “ God.” Some natives, however, have quite distinctly stated that Unkulunkulu was the first man, though not reckoned as one of the amadhiozi , because he died so long ago that no one now living can trace his descent from him. We find that many “ First Ancestors ” are in a similar position and, conversely, that many “ High Gods,” if one comes to ex- amine them at close quarters, are really the progenitors of the human race (at any rate that part of it to which the narrators belong — these myths do not often concern themselves with anything more), or at least of their royal line. The ghost of a great chief, who is not the direct ancestor of the whole tribe and who is associated, through his grave, with some prominent landmark of the country, is a step nearer to godship than that of a common man.
The Bapedi and Bavenda of North Transvaal have a “ god,” Ribimbi, who was also the first man, and his son Khudjana is said to have made the world; while the same probably applies to Nwali or Nyali of the Banyai . 21 Some tribes in East Africa give the name of their divinity as Were , 22 and it seems to me by no means improbable that here we have a point of contact with Vere, the Pokomo ancestor whose story will be related in the next chapter.
As to Unkulunkulu, we find Bishop Callaway’s 23 native informants saying that “ he came out first, he is the uhlanga 24 from which all men broke off. . . . The old men say . . . he made the first men, the ancients of long ago. . . . What I have heard is this, that men sprang from Unkulunkulu, as if he made them because he existed before them.”
He is distinguished from “ the King which is above ” (inkosi e pezulu ), who would seem to be identical with the Thonga Tilo ; for, of the latter, “ we say, he is above, Unku-
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lunkulu is beneath 3 the things which are beneath were made by him.” This fits in with the idea that the abode of the dead is under the earth. It is unnecessary to pursue this subject further, as it belongs rather to the domain of Comparative Religion than to that of Mythology; and the principal myth connected with Unkulunkulu — that of the Chameleon — will find a more appropriate place in the chapter on the “ Ori- gin of Death.”
Imana of the Warundi 25 is similarly envisaged as the Su- preme Being, the ancestor of the race and the Chief of the Ancestral Spirits ( umukuru y’imizimu) .
The difficulty, not to say impossibility, of laying down hard and fast definitions, is illustrated in the case of Mukasa, said to hold the highest rank among the gods of Uganda, 26 though he is neither the Creator nor the First Man. He has a father and grandfather among the gods, but neither of these is Ka- tonda, the Creator, nor Gulu, “ Heaven,” who figures so con- spicuously in the story of Kintu, the First Man, as we shall see in our next chapter. In fact, we hear curiously little about Katonda, and Gulu, though said to “ command the elements,” has nothing like the importance of Mukasa — at any rate in the officially recognised religion. 27 Dr. Roscoe thinks it “ certain that he was a human being who, because of his be- nevolence, came to be regarded as a god.” We do not learn whether any Baganda at the present day trace their descent from him. His legend represents him as appearing in a fully peopled world, whereas Kintu found it uninhabited, so that we should have to suppose him long posterior to the latter, if logical consistency went for anything in mythology. Mukasa had temples over all Uganda, and these, with the exception of the principal temple, on Bubembe Island, contained a canoe- paddle as his “ sacred emblem.” “No one knows for certain what was there; some say it was a large meteoric stone turned first to the east and then to the west according to the phases of
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the moon.” Neither of these objects is alluded to in the story told of Mukasa, nor can I find any explanation of their mean- ing in connection with him.
Mukasa is said to have been the son of Musisi , 28 the god who causes earthquakes, though elsewhere his father is called Wa- nema. His mother, presumably a mortal, belonged to the Lung-fish clan: her name was Nambubi. Before the birth of Mukasa, she refused all food but ripe plantains of a special kind j how this affected the child is not very clear, since we are told that, when he was weaned he would eat nothing but the heart and liver of animals, and drank their blood. At a very tender age, he disappeared from his home and was found by the people of Bubembe sitting under a large tree on their island. They built him a house and appointed a man named Semagumba — whose descendants or representatives were down to our own day the priests of the Bubembe temple — to look after him. Some say that, after living there for fourteen generations, he died and was buried in the forest ; others that he disappeared as he had come. The most noteworthy fact about his cult is that, unlike many other gods of the Baganda, he did not require human sacrifices.
Whether or not the High God is consciously identified with the material Heaven, we constantly find him conceived as dwelling there. This material sky, of course, is a solid vault, above which is a country much like this familiar earth of ours. The Thonga 29 call the point where heaven touches the earth u bugimamusi . . . viz., the place where women can lean their pestles (which elsewhere must be propped against a wall or tree) against the vault.” Sometimes it is called “ The place where women pound mealies kneeling . . . they cannot stand erect, or their pestles would strike against the sky.” Men have frequently attempted to scale this vault without suc- cess, as we saw in the legend of Onyankopong: it seems as if all collective efforts had been foredoomed to failure j but indi-
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viduals have occasionally been more fortunate. The idea seems a very natural one in the childhood of the world: the sky, which seems so near and yet is so inaccessible, even if we travel to the farthest limit of our horizon where it seems to touch the earth, would be one of the first things to draw the questioning mind of man beyond his immediate surroundings. The early school of mythologists, coming upon such tales, might have inferred either a “ Primitive Revelation ” — or rather, tradition — or an infiltration of European influence which would have introduced echoes of the Tower of Babel story, perhaps even of the classical Giant legends. There is, after all, a connection, though not precisely of the kind early mythologists supposed: all these tales alike have their roots in a Primitive Revelation — a universal instinct of the human heart.
There is a remarkable group of tales describing the adven- tures of human beings who (like Jack of the Bean-Stalk) have made their way into the sky; but before going on to examine these we must note the fact that, in a number of instances, the High God who now dwells in the sky is said to have retired thither after a more or less prolonged sojourn on earth. This may have been the case with Mukasa, though we are not ex- pressly told that he disappeared to heaven, nor do we know the reason for his disappearance.
The Mbundu people, says Chatelain , 30 “ believe in one great, invisible God, who made all things and controls all things. But they confess they know very little about His character. Tradition says men have offended Him, and He has with- drawn His affection from them.” True, this does not speak of an actual withdrawal from earth to heaven, but probably some older tradition of the kind underlies the statement.
The Bushongo 31 say that Bumba, the Creator, whom they also call Chembe (== Jambi = Nzambi = Nyambe), after completing his work, prescribed tabus (I think it would not be
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too much to say, “ assigned their totems ”) to men, appointed three chiefs over them (from the first and greatest of whom the Bushongo Paramount Chief traces his descent), and then rose into the air and disappeared. Thenceforward he only communicated with men by revealing himself in dreams, and no real worship is paid to him. It may be noted that some tribes have a much more abstract and immaterial conception of him than others, who regard him as a “ magnified ” and (to some extent) “ non-natural man.”
Here no blame is assigned to any one for Bumba’s disap- pearance. It is otherwise on the Zambezi , 32 where the Ba- luyi say that Nyambe once lived on earth, but afterwards as- cended into the sky “ for fear of men.” No explanation, how- ever, is given of this statement, and it does not seem to be borne out by another account, which is as follows: “ When Nyambe lived on earth, people said that he had fallen from the sky. When he returned thither, he climbed up by means of a spider’s thread. When he was up on high, he said: ‘Worship me.’ Men, seeing him act like this (offended by what they con- sidered his pride), said: ‘Let us kill Nyambe.’ He
escaped into heaven. . . . They planted long poles in the earth and fixed others on top of them. . . . When they had climbed to a great height, the posts fell, and the men who had climbed up on them were killed.”
The Basubiya , 33 however, who call their High God Leza, while they say he went up to heaven by a spider’s thread, give no reason for his so doing, unless we are to connect a previous remark, that “ men were very much afraid of him,” with his action. Some tried to follow him up by the same route, but the thread broke and they came down. So they put out the spider’s eyes — an cetiological myth to account for the supposed fact that he has none at the present day. Then they set up a scaffolding with the same result as in the case of the Baluyi. It would almost seem as if their purpose, like that of the
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PLATE X
9
Some Bantu Types
1. A woman of the Basuto.
2. Zulu Girls.
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