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361
African Mythology / Re: African Mythology
« on: July 18, 2019, 05:58:56 PM »



TALES OF DEMONS AND OGRES' 251

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.


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


252

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.”


TALES OF DEMONS AND OGRES 253

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! ”


254


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


“ 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


TALES OF DEMONS AND OGRES


255

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


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


2 56

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


TALES OF DEMONS AND OGRES


257

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.







THE LITTLE PEOPLE


259

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,


26 o


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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.


THE LITTLE PEOPLE


261

362
African Mythology / Re: African Mythology
« 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,


TALES OF DEMONS AND OGRES


243

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


244


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


246

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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247

“ 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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248

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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249

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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235

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


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


238

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.




NATURE MYTHS


239


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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241


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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AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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


NATURE MYTHS


227


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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AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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.”


NATURE MYTHS


229

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.


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


230

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.





NATURE MYTHS


231

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


232


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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


365
African Mythology / Re: African Mythology
« on: July 18, 2019, 05:55:57 PM »



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.




HEROES


2i 5


“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


21 6


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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-


HEROES


217

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


218


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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


HEROES


219


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


220


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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


HEROES


221


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.




HEROES


223

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


224

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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


LEGENDS OF THE SPIRIT-WORLD 211


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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AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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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AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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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AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


198

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.




LEGENDS OF THE SPIRIT-WORLD 199

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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AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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,


LEGENDS OF THE SPIRIT-WORLD 201


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


202


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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-


LEGENDS OF THE SPIRIT-WORLD 203

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 ”


204


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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


20 6 AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY

— 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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THE ANCESTRAL SPIRITS


189

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


190


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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


192 AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY

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,


THE ANCESTRAL SPIRITS


193


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


194 AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY

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-


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


196

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


LEGENDS OF THE SPIRIT-WORLD 197

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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AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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


THE ANCESTRAL SPIRITS


181


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.





THE ANCESTRAL SPIRITS


183

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.


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


184

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


THE ANCESTRAL SPIRITS 185

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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AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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


THE ANCESTRAL SPIRITS


187

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-


1 88


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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

370
African Mythology / Re: African Mythology
« on: July 17, 2019, 08:42:04 PM »



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.








MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH 171

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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AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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


MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH 173

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


174


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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-


MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH 175

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


17 6 AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY

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


MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH 177'

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


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


178

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.


i8o

371
African Mythology / Re: African Mythology
« on: July 17, 2019, 08:41:06 PM »

AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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







MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH 163

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


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


164

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


MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH 165

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


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


1 66

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


MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH 167

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


1 6 8


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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.


MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH 169

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


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


170

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.”








372
African Mythology / Re: African Mythology
« on: July 17, 2019, 08:40:01 PM »


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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


MYTHS OF ORIGINS


r 53

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


154


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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.




MYTHS OF ORIGINS


1 55

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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159

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


MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF DEATH 161

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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144

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,


MYTHS OF ORIGINS


HS


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


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


146

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.







MYTHS OF ORIGINS


147


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.


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


148

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


MYTHS OF ORIGINS


149

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


150


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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


MYTHS OF ORIGINS


i5 1

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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HIGH GODS AND HEAVEN


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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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134

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


HIGH GODS AND HEAVEN


i35

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 ! ”


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


136

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


HIGH GODS AND HEAVEN


137


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.


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


138

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.


HIGH GODS AND HEAVEN


139

“ 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


140


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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




HIGH GODS AND HEAVEN


141

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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AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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.


375
African Mythology / Re: African Mythology
« on: July 17, 2019, 08:36:38 PM »


AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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.




HIGH GODS AND HEAVEN


125


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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AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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


HIGH GODS AND HEAVEN


127


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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AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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-


HIGH GODS AND HEAVEN


129


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-


HIGH GODS AND HEAVEN


131

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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AFRICAN MYTHOLOGY


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.