Kaffir folk-lore

KAFFIR FOLK-LORE:

A Selection from the Traditional Tales

CURRENT AMONG THE PEOPLE LIVING ON THE EASTERN BORDER OF THE CAPE COLONY

WITH COPIOUS EXPLANATORY NOTES.

BY GEO. Mc CALL THEAL, AUTHOR OF “A HISTORY OF THE COLONIES AND STATES OF SOUTH AFRICA.”

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON: SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, Le BAS & LOWREY, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1886.

PREFACE.

Of late years a great deal of interest has been taken in the folklore of uncivilized tribes by those who have made it their business to study mankind. It has been found that a knowledge of the traditionary tales of a people is a key to their ideas and a standard of their powers of thought. These stories display their imaginative faculties; they are guides to the nature of the religious belief, of the form of government, of the marriage customs, in short, of much that relates to both the inner and the outer life of those by whom they are told.

These tales also show the relationship between tribes and peoples of different countries and even of different languages. They are evidences that the same ideas are common to every branch of the human family at the same stage of progress. On this account, it is now generally recognised that in order to obtain correct information concerning an uncivilized race, a knowledge of their folklore is necessary. Without this a survey is no more complete than, for instance, a description of the English people would be if no notice of English literature were taken.

It is with a view of letting the people we have chosen to call Kaffirs describe themselves in their own words, that these stories have been collected and printed. They form only a small portion of the folklore that is extant among them, but it is believed that they have been so selected as to leave no distinguishing feature unrepresented.

Though these traditionary tales are very generally known, there are of course some persons who can relate them much better than others. The best narrators are almost invariably ancient dames, and the time chosen for story telling is always the evening. This is perhaps not so much on account of the evening being the most convenient time, as because such tales as these have most effect when told to an assemblage gathered round a fire circle, when night has spread her mantle over the earth, and when the belief in the supernatural is stronger than it is by day. Hence it may easily happen that persons may mix much with Kaffirs without even suspecting that they have in their possession a rich fund of legendary lore.

There is a peculiarity in many of these stories which makes them capable of almost indefinite expansion. They are so constructed that parts of one can be made to fit into parts of another, so as to form a new tale. In this respect they are like the blocks of wood in the form of cubes with which European children amuse themselves. Combined in one way they present the picture of a lion, another combination shows a map of Europe, another still, a view of St Paul’s, and so on. So with many of these tales. They are made up of fragments which are capable of a variety of combinations.

It will surprise no one to learn that these tales are already undergoing great changes among a very large section of the natives on the border. Tens of thousands of Kaffirs have adopted the religion of the Europeans, and the facility with which such changes can be made as were alluded to in the last paragraph has encouraged them to introduce ideas borrowed from their teachers. Thus with them Satan—of whom they had no conception before the advent of Europeans—is now the prompter to evil, and morals are drawn that never could have entered their heads in days of old. Their tales are thus a counterpart of the narrators, in possessing an adaptability to growth and a power of conformation to altered circumstances.

It is necessary to say a few words concerning the care that has been taken to give absolutely not a single sentence in any of these tales that has not come from native sources. Most of them have been obtained from at least ten or twelve individuals residing in different parts of the country, and they have all undergone a thorough revision by a circle of natives. They were not only told by natives, but were copied down by natives. The notes only are my own. I have directed the work of others, but have myself done nothing more than was necessary to explain the text. For this I can claim to be qualified by an intimate knowledge of the Kaffir people, gained through intercourse with them during a period of twenty years, and while filling positions among them varying from a mission teacher to a border magistrate.

Most of the tales collected in this book have already appeared in various South African papers and magazines, some as far back as 1874. They were arranged for publication in a volume which was to have been issued from the press of the Lovedale Missionary Institution, and the first sheet was already printed, when the disturbances of 1877 took place. I was then called away to perform work of a very different kind, and the publication was necessarily suspended. The book is now issued, in the hope that it may be found useful, as throwing light upon the mode of life of a people who differ from ourselves in many respects besides degree of civilization.

Geo. M. Theal.

Jan. 1882.

CONTENTS.

PAGE Introductory Chapter regarding the Kaffirs 1 The Story of the Bird that made Milk 29 The Story of Five Heads 48 The Story of Tangalimlibo 56 The Story of a Girl who disregarded the Custom of Ntonjane 67 The Story of Simbukumbukwana 72 The Story of Sikulume 78 The Story of Hlakanyana 89 The Story of Demane and Demazana 118 The Story of the Runaway Children; or, the Wonderful Feather 122 The Story of Ironside and his Sister 127 The Story of the Cannibal’s Wonderful Bird 133 The Story of the Cannibal Mother and her Children 137 The Story of the Girl and the Mbulu 144 The Story of Mbulukazi 148 The Story of Long Snake 155 The Story of Kenkebe 158 The Story of the Wonderful Horns 169 The Story of the Glutton 172 The Story of the Great Chief of the Animals 176 The Story of the Hare 179 The Story of Lion and Little Jackal 186 Proverbs and Figurative Expressions 191 Notes 207

KAFFIR FOLK.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER REGARDING THE KAFFIRS.

In South Africa the word Kaffir is often used in a general way to signify any black native who is not the descendant of an imported slave, but on the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony the term is usually restricted to a member of the Amaxosa tribe. It is from individuals of this tribe that the following stories have been collected.

Europeans have designated these people Kaffirs ever since the discovery of the country, though they themselves cannot even pronounce the word, as the English sound of the letter r is wanting in their language. R in Kaffir words, as now written, represents the same guttural sound as g does in Dutch, or the Scotch sound of ch in loch; thus Rarabe is pronounced Khah-khah-bay. They have no word by which to signify the whole race, but each tribe has its own title, which is usually the name of its first great chief, with the plural prefix Ama or Aba.

A very large portion of South Africa is occupied by people of this race. All along the eastern coast, as far south as the Great Fish River, the country is thickly populated with Kaffir tribes. On the other side of the mountains, the Bechuanas, their near kindred, are found stretching almost across to the Atlantic shore, from the heart of the continent southward to the Orange River.

The country lying between the present colonies of the Cape and Natal was first explored by Europeans in the year 1688, and was then found to be occupied by four great tribes,—the Amampondomsi, the Amampondo, the Abatembu, and the Amaxosa,—who formed nations as distinct from each other as are the French and the Italians. Their language was the same, and their laws and customs varied very slightly; but in all that respected government they were absolutely independent of one another. It has since been ascertained that the tribes further northward do not differ materially from these.

The Amaxosa were the farthest to the southward in 1688, as they have been ever since. On the coast they had then reached the Keiskama River, and there is good reason to believe that inland their outposts extended westward as far as the site of the present village of Somerset East. They were thus in contact with Hottentot tribes along an extended line, and an amalgamation of the two races had probably already commenced. It is certain that during the latter half of the last century a great many Hottentots were incorporated with the Amaxosa.

The mode of incorporation was in most instances a selection of Hottentot females after the destruction of their clan in war; but in at least one case a Hottentot tribe became gradually a Kaffir clan by mixture of blood through adoption of Kaffir refugees. The people of this tribe, a pure Hottentot one in 1689 and then called the Gqunaqua, were found by a traveller a century la