NATIVE ARTS AND LITERATURE.
H.—TRADES AND MANUFACTURES.
The chief method of obtaining a livelihood is by cultivating the soil.
Near a lake abounding with fishes, the cultivation of the soil, though
not abandoned, may take a secondary place. In districts abounding with
game, the men as a rule hand over all agricultural work to their wives
and slaves. Fishing and hunting are looked on as being more dignified
occupations than hoeing.
_Work in Iron._
Skilled labour is exemplified chiefly in their blacksmiths. Still the
smith does not live so exclusively by his trade that he can neglect his
farm, and in his operations he has sometimes so many assistants that his
peculiar position is compromised.
Iron is found in many places. It is dug up and brought to a furnace or
small kiln (ng’aso) made of clay. A charcoal fire is kept blazing by
means of clay pipes or hollow bamboos, which communicate with the bottom
of the kiln, and are used as the pipes of a bellows. For a bellows they
use a goat’s skin. Of iron they make hoes, spears, arrow-heads, knives,
&c. Their hoes have no iron ring for fixing a handle. A hole is bored by
means of a heated iron (there are no drills) in the handle, and the end
of the hoe is inserted.
When a man wants a pocket handkerchief, it is to the blacksmith that he
must go. The pocket handkerchief is made of iron and shaped somewhat like
a spoon. The point of it is turned up so as to enter the nostril, and as
the native has no pockets, it is hung round the neck.
_Wood-work and Basket-work._
The worker-in-wood has hardly a distinct trade. Nearly every man does his
own wood-work. They make mortars by hollowing out part of the trunk of
a tree with a bent axe. The work takes about four days. Drums are made
in the same way—their ends are covered with python skins. Certain drums
are beaten on the breast; the larger are not lifted from the ground. We
have heard the sound of some of those at five miles’ distance. Chairs in
imitation of animals are cut out of the trunk of a tree; but the legs are
easily broken, as they run at right angles to the cleavage of the timber.
Similarly they make large birds, wooden pillows, and plates.
Many things are made of bamboos (milasi) and reeds (matete). The tribes
on the hills thus make beds and baskets in endless variety. The beds are
not clumsy. One can easily “take them up and walk”. They are mats made of
thin slips of bamboo, which are sewn together by a bamboo needle. They
remind us of a Venetian blind, only the slips lie side by side without
overlapping. They can be folded up in the form of a cylinder and earned
conveniently under the arm (but the native carries his loads on his
head). The borders of their baskets are thin broad pieces of wood, which
are bent into a circular form, and sometimes curiously carved. A similar
ornamental device, simpler in pattern, is seen on their clay pots. Good
hats are made of the mlasa.
_Bark Cloth, &c._
They go and strip a tree of its bark, which they soften in water, and
beat with an ebony hammer till it forms a cloth. This was the ordinary
clothing of the people before the missions. Now it is worn above other
clothes on a rainy day. It very soon tears. The work is very tedious,
much beating being required. One hears the sound of the hammer long
before he comes to the spot. The piece of bark is laid on a large log;
after being well hammered, it becomes quite thin. The cloth thus formed
is much wider than the original piece of bark had been.
Cotton grows plentifully. All the natives can make thread of it. One of
their most tedious occupations is to make cloth. They do this in a very
rude manner, and only make small strips at a time. Each thread has to be
put separately in its place by the hand. Very few natives have courage
for this tedious manipulation; but the cloth when made is strong and
highly esteemed; it resembles bath towels.
They dye the English calico that it may last longer, but they preserve
gaudy dresses without dyeing. A root is used for soap where the European
article cannot be got.
Their pots are all made of clay by the women. Some of their clay vessels
are a beautiful red. In their cooking they use no metals; English pots
and pans speak to them of arts that are far beyond them. Their food is
boiled in a clay pot, which is propped up on three stones. Another pot is
turned down to serve for a lid.
Men of considerable skill are called alupa or apalu, and are believed to
have strong medicine or charms.
If any one were to describe our English industries, he could not dispose
of the subject in a short paragraph. But in Africa these industries do
not strike us so much. They are not such a large item in human life.
We see none of the working at high pressure that meets us everywhere
at home. There are no crowds of pale-faced men and girls rushing along
almost mechanically in response to some factory bell. There are no poor
clerks cooped up in dingy counting-houses—no students with aching heads,
trying to dispense with sleep. There are no careworn parents whose hard
toil barely supports their children. The African has about him an air
of stillness and repose that is in beautiful harmony with the scenery
around. His life is not a struggle for existence. He does not care to
work against time. Ambition does not drag him behind its chariot wheels.
If we were to rank the Africans in classes, we should put down most of
them as “gentlemen in easy circumstances”. Their circumstances are easy
not because their gratifications are many, but because their wants are
few.
The way in which their industries come before our notice is like this.
We take a walk in the country. By the side of some brook we find a man
or two digging for iron ore. They are surrounded by companions with
whom they keep up a cheerful conversation. Some are ready to assist in
carrying the ore to the furnace. They carry clay also, which is to be
plastered on their kiln. How are these loads to be transported? There are
no carts, no wheelbarrows, and no roads suitable for either. Neither have
they any boxes or baskets. What are they to do? One lad darts into the
bush and cuts a bundle of wands; he then takes his knife and splits each
wand (if he be not content to use it whole), and there, he says, is his
basket. The white man replies, “Yes; these wands might make a basket if
you had anything to tie them together”. Immediately the youth tears off
strips of bark, and exclaims, “Here’s the black man’s rope,” and soon the
load is tied up in the middle of his basket.
As we pass along the stream we find indications of agricultural work
also, but on these we do not dwell, as it is the more special trades
we wish to illustrate. Already we see women washing their grain at the
stream for we are advancing on little hamlets. Now we hear the peculiar
tap, tap, tap of the hammer on the bark-cloth, as it mingles with
the notes of the birds. Under the trees we can descry a group of men
splitting up bamboos and smoothing the slips to form a bed. In a shaded
verandah we find an old woman or two moulding some soft clay. It looks a
shapeless mass, but it is “in the hands of the potter”. Each worker has
found some ochre, for she is fond of ornamental tints. A potsherd is by
her, and she has calculated the precise form she will give her vessel.
[Illustration: NATIVE PIPES AND POTTERY.]
Soon we reach the village green. Here we find a number of men sitting
doing nothing. It may be that one is sewing a cloth, while the others
loll upon mats and dreamily watch his hands. An ardent youth may approach
the group and astonish us by taking from under his loin cloth a reel
and some cotton, which he proceeds to make into thread. There are in
that dark group all the elements of human nature that we find in busier
lands. But in African life there is nothing of the bustle and hurry and
scramble, nothing of the care and worry, the headache and heartache, that
are found in England.
We cannot leave the group without asking ourselves, “What has all our
boasted civilisation done?” Are we any happier than these rude natives?
We shall see by and by that they are not exempt from hardship and injury.
Their valleys and mountains witness many a sorrowful scene. But after we
have placed a policeman in every corner, hardship and injury are still in
our midst. Does it not seem as if there were some bankruptcy about human
nature? For a hundred generations we have tried all manner of experiments
with Governments and Institutions. We have moved them backwards and
forwards like pieces on a draught board. In all this have we not been
proving our bankruptcy? We have been diligently trying the most improved
methods of book-keeping, but the result has only been to chase the
deficit out of one column into another. The deficit is still there!
Yes. But above the clouds and storms we have the blue vault of heaven.
The pale factory girl, the over wrought mechanic, the anxious student
may all have a peace that passeth understanding. As the missionary is
surrounded by the heathen, he feels that his message to them has not so
much to do with civilisation. They are not disposed to trouble about
mechanical improvements in their unsettled land; but in their unsettled
land they are arrested by an expression like “Fear not them that kill
the body, and after that have nothing that they can do”. Startling words
to those that pass their days in fear of them that kill the body! These
are surely whispers from some other world! Those dark figures have often
gazed upon “the heavens above and the earth beneath” without making
much of the vast mystery. They are likely to make more of the Scripture
message. One of the oldest will turn on his mat and quietly remark,
“Father, if you are speaking the truth, we are all living in darkness”.
I.—THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS.
What corresponds among the Africans to the clergymen, doctors, and
lawyers of modern England? It will be found that in Africa these
professions are not distinct, just as in Mediæval England the monks did
all the teaching, healing, and advising. With reference to worship we
shall find that the chief of the country and the chief of a village take
prominent places.
_The Physician._
The healing art is practised most purely by the Msing’anga. Some of the
methods are these:—_Cupping_ by means of a horn, whose end is stopped
by bees wax. The blood that fills the horn is thrown to the ground, and
the disease falls with it. _Counter-irritation._—Sometimes the physician
will be content by making a number of incisions chiefly along the legs;
on other occasions he will rub in vegetable ashes. _Administration of
medicine_, which consists chiefly of plants and their roots; the Yao word
for medicine means also a tree. The natives extract arrows by cutting
all round the wound. They never amputate in order to heal, but they are
able to cut off limbs very neatly, and are fond of practising the art on
criminals and enemies.
But a great part of the treatment is by charms. Even where the native
knows a good cure he looks on it as a charm, and his use of it is
accompanied by much senseless mummery. This will be understood when we
remember that diseases are supposed to be caused by witchcraft.
_The Sorcerer._
This brings us to speak of a more terrible member of the learned
professions, viz., the sorcerer, diviner, or witch-doctor (mchisango).
The “cup wherewith he divineth” is called chisango.
He is appealed to after the physician or herbalist has failed. He is
asked to tell what witch causes the disease. He may find one, and the
person that he accuses of witchcraft goes with a present to the sick
person, who recovers immediately.
The diviner may be consulted on any matter. He is the great adviser of
the people in all their difficulties. A person goes to him, and puts as
many questions as he likes, and receives answers. These conversations
are very interesting; but all that I have heard are so very intricate
that it is impossible to do justice to them in an abridgment. “My female
slave has gone away, what am I to do?” The diviner tells what he is to
do if she have gone to Cherasulo, and what he is to do if she have gone
to another place. He mentions what will happen if he goes to ask for her
according to the individual that he may ask, &c., &c. Part of the advice
may have reference to the spot where he will obtain a medicine helpful in
his negotiations.
While these diviners give their response they shake a small gourd[4]
filled with pebbles, and inspect pieces of sticks, bones, claws, pottery,
&c., which are in another gourd. They often give sound advice, and they
pretend to get it by this inspection, as it might otherwise give offence
to their client.
Some of the diviners are the most intelligent men in the country. They
claim high fees. One time we told a diviner very candidly our opinion
of his art, insisting that his advice was sound, and deserved to be
paid for, but that he knew as well as I that it did not come from the
withered-looking contents of the gourd, but from his own judgment. The
man took no offence, and though he lived at some distance he made a point
of coming thereafter to our Sabbath meetings.
These men are the great agents in detecting and trying witchcraft.
In one respect they, and not the chiefs, form the judicial tribunals
of the land, although they play into the hands of the chiefs or any
rich man that pays handsomely. After they have detected a criminal he
must be tried. The trial takes place by the drinking of the poisoned
cup—mwai. Consequently the diviner had better be on good terms with the
professional “pounder of poison” (mpondela mwai), whose duty it is to
administer this poisoned draught to the accused. This, in case of guilt,
at once convicts and punishes, the poison causes death. In case of
innocence the poison is vomited, and the accused is acquitted.
The witch-detective is at the head of the divining profession, and is
referred to in almost every case of death, and sometimes in smaller
cases, as where life was in danger (107).
K.—MEDICINES AND CHARMS.
A great many trees are supposed to have virtues. Each native knows this,
and becomes to some extent his own doctor. Pain in the stomach is treated
by the bark of the mbawa; headache by rubbing externally with ashes of
the msolo, as also by certain charms put round the temples. The first
thing a native does in headache is to tie a string tightly round his
brow. The symptom of cold and shivering is treated by bathing in “water
of the mkako”. For ulcers they use the mlonde. Ulcerated legs is one of
the commonest maladies that attack children. For a time English treatment
of these was brought into discredit, as the children would carelessly
tear off the dressings and bandages. One native treatment was to tie on
a broad leaf by strips of bark (which serves as their thread), and leave
it till the sore had improved.
A common war medicine is to eat the heart of an enemy.
Medicine to keep the hunter from danger and to render him successful is
much prized. Elephant medicine they buy from each other at the highest
prices they can afford. They have many miscellaneous charms—some tied
about their bodies, others on their guns. They have a very effectual
arrow poison.
One time a leopard was killed by strychnia. A chief and his Prime
Minister came to Zomba Mission very secretly to beg for this “medicine”;
it was to be sprinkled into the mortars where the flour of their enemies
was pounded. The experiment was trusted to by its promoters as likely to
be very successful, a point which was not at all doubtful. Great was the
disappointment when the poison was refused.
The goats belonging to the Mission seemed to get on very well, and Mr.
Buchanan was beset with many entreaties for a medicine to increase the
goats of the neighbouring chiefs.
When a fowl hatches, the egg shells that have been forsaken by the young
brood are carefully collected and hung up in the house of their owner to
preserve the chickens from hawks and other dangers.
After they have planted their crops, the field is often protected against
theft by charms which they buy. Pieces of string, either twisted from
native cotton or made of the bark of a tree, are thus used.
On one occasion Dr. Macklin was called to prescribe for a woman. He asked
to see her tongue. His quick observation detected at the same time signs
of excitement and temper about her, and he advised her to try to be
agreeable with her husband and friends. It appears the woman was a great
scold; and the natives were astonished to find that the Doctor could
discover this by looking at her tongue! That he had a great “charm” was
beyond all doubt.
L.—TRADITIONAL LITERATURE.
These people have, of course, no writing. We met with many that had never
seen a book before. The sight of pictures impressed them so much that
their first impulse was to run away supposing that the little painted
lion or leopard was dangerous. By and by some one in the crowd discovers
that this lion is quite thin! He has looked at the back of the paper
and found that the body of the lion is not there! Some of the boldest,
after we assure them of safety, will even put their hands upon him. The
attitude of old and young is one of utter, speechless amazement.
But these people are rich in a traditional literature. It meets us in at
least four distinct forms. 1. Ndawi or conundrums. Some of them are quite
short, as “the house without a door,” for an egg. An incredible number of
these is in common circulation, and known to most boys and girls. I noted
down over 150 of them.
There are other conundrums in the form of a little story.
2. Ndano, or tales. These are also called ndawi, because many of them
resemble the conundrums in having a double meaning. Some of these, we
might almost say most of these, when complete have songs in them, which
are repeated every now and then at each crisis in the tale. They are
often recited in this form on public occasions.
I got one old man that was as enthusiastic in his recitals as the old
Homerids are said to have been. When I was writing to his dictation my
private study became a small theatre. In vain I reminded him that the
nursery was near! His voice was audible in the outside, scores of yards
from the house. School children stopped their games, and came giggling
about, and demure old natives would turn off the public highway and
advance in amazement. Yet even so my old man was not satisfied—his
enthusiasm, he thought, fell short of the occasion, and he introduced two
young women to sing responses to the chants. The natives do not speak of
“telling a tale,” but of “singing a tale” (kwimba ndawi).
3. Nyimbo or Songs. These may be extemporised—music, responses and all,
on the shortest notice. But there is a great collection of old songs,
many of which can be identified as being the songs of several tales (L.
2), even where they are used independently. Indeed the singers could
seldom point to the corresponding tale; it was only when we happened to
know the tale before that we could claim the song for it. Still many
songs we believe to be quite independent. The music is a simple chant.
Those that are not reciting join in responses. The language of the songs
is more difficult than that of the tales, and still more difficult is the
language of the catch-word literature (L. 4).
Many of their songs aim at being an echo of tuneful nature around them.
One beautiful chant imitates a little brook as it goes murmuring down its
stony channel. The singers intentionally render this song in a subdued
voice. I could not find any corresponding tale. It calls up to my mind
the idea of a mother sitting with a few children on the bank (chiko) of
a small stream as she has finished her hoeing, and rests for a minute
before going home. She warns the children against the Likwanya or prickly
bush that grows by the stream. This strain sung so softly has a soothing
effect, and might well make the children sit down on the bank, engrossed
with the sound of the rippling stream imitated in the music.
Sung in a company of little girls it is rendered thus—
_1st Voice._ Likwanya likunyanya ku chiko.
_Response._ _Anyanyale._
_1st Voice._ { singing } Likwanya likunyanya ku chiko.
_2nd Voice._ {simultaneously.} Anya-nya-nya-le e.
_1st Voice._ { simultaneous. } Anya-nya-nya-le e.
_2nd Voice._ { } Likunyanya ku chiko.
_1st Voice._ { simultaneous. } Likunyanya ku chiko.
_2nd Voice._ { } Anya-nya-nya-le e.
_Response._ _Anyanyale._
After this the girls that have sung the parts marked 1st voice and 2nd
voice fall back on the response; and a 3rd and 4th voice take these
parts. All the voices that are not reciting join in the response.
Another song has reference to a large bird, the ndututu. One voice
designedly imitates its notes as it converses with a few women; while
another voice imitates as distinctly the pounding of corn in which these
women are engaged.
4. The fourth form of their literature is in certain catch-word
compositions (chitagu), which have double meanings. The following is a
specimen when there are two speakers or reciters:—
THE FIRST SAYS. THE SECOND SAYS.
Nda. Nda kuluma.
Kuluma. Kuluma mbale.
Mbale. Mbale katete.
Katete. Katete ngupe.
Ngupe. Ngupe akane.
Kane. Kane akongwe.
Kongwe. Akongole chimanga.
Chimanga. Chimanje macholo.
Macholo. Gachole wandu.
Long tales are carried on in this way. One effect sought after is to
bring together words similar in form, but differing in meaning, as if we
were to catch up the last word of our sentences thus:—
Come forward, shew thys_elf_!
_Elf_ dost thou call me, vile pretender?
In this form of literature we meet with plays upon words—an unusual
phenomenon in unwritten languages. In the conundrums proper (L. 1) we met
with only one case of a play on words. We are asked, “What is the girl
that decks herself?” The word for “deck” happens also to mean “shine,”
and the answer is “the moon”.
Having now spoken of the forms in which this literature has been handed
down we shall say something of its matter or contents.
A great part of it consists of fables regarding the lower animals where
the characteristics of these animals are brought out. The rabbit is the
clever hero of all the tales, much as the fox is in European tales. The
hyena (litunu) is celebrated for its greediness. The litunu is a large
carrion eater, which stands, we think, rather higher than the lion. In
one tale the hyena is always begging food from the lion. The lion makes
a buck climb a tree, so that its shadow is reflected in the water; this
reflection is pointed out to the hyena, who at once casts himself into
the river.
The following may stand for an example of their tales:—There was once
a hyena and a leopard. They went a journey, and the hyena picked up a
tortoise, and told the leopard, saying, “See, I have picked up my[5]
tortoise”. The leopard said, “Give it me that I may see it”. He gave it
him, then the leopard threw the tortoise away. One day they heard that
the tortoise was a doctor. Then the hyena and the leopard arranged to
go to the tortoise, and beg medicine for hunting. They went, they found
the tortoise, and said, “We have come for medicine for hunting”. The
tortoise gave the leopard beautiful spots, and the hyena ugly spots,
because the hyena had wished to eat the tortoise; then he gave them horns
of medicine, and said to them, “If you find meat that died of itself
you must not eat it”. Then the hyena and the leopard went to hunt. On
the path they found an animal that had died of itself. The hyena said,
“Leopard, my friend, behold an animal that has died of itself”. But the
leopard said, “Come, let us go away”. The hyena said, “Pshaw! we must not
eat meat that died of itself?” Then the leopard said to the hyena, “That
doctor said to us, should you find meat that died of itself, you must
not eat it”. The hyena said “Pshaw! not quite!” The leopard went to the
bush, but the hyena returned to the doctor, and said, “Tortoise, I have
found meat that died of itself. Is it a transgression to look at it?” The
tortoise said, “No, it is not a transgression”.
The hyena went to his meat and gazed on it. Then he went back again to
the doctor and said, “I have looked at it”. Then he said again, “Is it a
transgression to lick it?” The tortoise said “No”. The hyena then went
to his meat and licked it. Then he returned again to the tortoise and
said, “Is it a transgression to remove it from the path?” The tortoise
said “No”. The hyena then went to his meat and removed it off the path,
and threw it far away. He returned again to the tortoise and said to him,
“I have removed it”. And the tortoise said, “Very well”. The hyena asked
again saying, “Is eating it a transgression?” The tortoise said, “You
will not swallow it?” The hyena said “No”. Then he went back to his meat
and ate it, and came back to the tortoise and said, “I have eaten that
meat”. But the tortoise said, “You have transgressed, hyena, you will not
be a hunter, but the leopard will be a good hunter, I gave him a horn of
medicine”. So the leopard caught much meat, but the hyena did not know
how to catch meat. The tortoise had said, “Hyena, O chief, your name is
hyena”.
We may here note that the naming of the animals is a subject on which
they have many legends. The names, too, in most of their legends about
persons, are significant, and accord with the moral of the story.
It must not be forgotten that all the natives’ names have a meaning It
is common for men and women to bear the names of animals; thus we may
have a Mr. Cock, Mr. Lion, and so on. We almost think that their children
when hearing these stories for the first time would think of “hyena,”
“leopard,” &c., as being people who bore these names.
Several stories relate to fowls and birds. Fowls are stated to have
been at first wild, and after a while to have been domesticated. One
fowl was visited by a guinea-fowl. The latter was greatly astonished
that the housewife threw out food for them—that a comfortable house was
provided—and every kindness shewn; but just as all these things were
favourably impressing the guinea-fowl the hungry husband returned and
said, “Kill that fowl as a relish for my porridge”.
Many such tales evince a wonderful sympathy for animals. The natives are
greatly distressed by the visits of a large crow to their crops. Yet they
have a tale which makes them excuse the depredations. “Once on a time a
chief was puzzled over some case, and could get no advice till a crow
came and put matters quite right. This crow was handsomely rewarded by
a gift of beans and other seeds. It proceeded to carry these home, but
dropped many on the way; now when the crow rifles the native’s fields it
is looking for some of those lost seeds and their fruit.”
They have a great many tales embodying theories on the creation of the
world, to which we shall allude below (13). The introduction of arts
and manufactures is also an important theme. We are told of a woman
that found people with plenty of corn, but no porridge. They simply
chewed their grain. This lady produced a mortar and procured flour.
Hollow stones they say gave place to pots, in the same way as caves were
abandoned for houses. They speak of a time when they hoed with wood. It
was after they could use iron knives that they dug down, and could put
in their posts as they do in their modern houses. The first clothing was
bark. Death was introduced by a woman who taught two men to sleep; she
held one’s nostrils, and he never awoke. “Death and sleep,” the legend
remarks, “are one word.”
Monkeys were at one time human beings who quarrelled with their friends,
and went to stay in the bush. Though the natives admit that the monkeys
are their cousins, they are not slow in pointing out where they differ
from men. We said to one woman who was severely censuring the monkeys for
eating her crop, that she should give them some corn to see whether they
would not raise a crop for themselves. She replied that monkeys would not
leave their seed in the ground—they would pick it up and eat it. It is
not everyone that would have fixed so promptly on such a characteristic
difference between men and monkeys. They give many tales of experiments
tried to make human beings out of monkeys, specially in the case of
women that were barren and wanted a child; but, after the most careful
training, these “children” always rejoined their own “kind”.
_Relation to Tales of Other Lands._
There are also many wonderful tales regarding people that crossed lakes
or rivers; but at the time we did not note these so carefully, as we
considered that it was possible that our narrator might modify it in
accordance with teaching that he had heard from the Scriptures.
Since we arrived in England, however, we find that Bishop Callaway
has written down stories exactly similar, and indeed hardly so
circumstantial, which he received from the Amazulu. On looking over his
collection we find several that correspond, chiefly as regards the most
striking feature of the story, with some of ours. This shows what we had
been convinced of long before, that some of these traditions had been
recited at a period when the ancestors of the Amazulu and of these Nyasa
tribes were one people.
The following is an instance of the kind of resemblance:—In one of the
tales of Bishop Callaway a young man tries to destroy the cubs of a
leopard. He kills them one by one; and the point by which the deception
was carried out was to hand the cubs to their mother one by one. When
only one cub was left he handed this cub several times according to the
number of children. The leopard thought that the same cub handed to her
three times was three cubs. In a collection of ours that was sent home in
1880, and since printed, a “rabbit” or fox cheats a lioness by the same
peculiar strategy.
In the stories themselves there is little to give us any note of time or
antiquity. They are liable to modification too in important particulars.
Thus one man will tell a wonderful story of what a hero effected by his
gun. He judges that a European would despise the hero if he were armed
only with a bow and arrows. But another narrator of the same story may
remark on his variation that guns did not come till long after.
After we have had a tale written, we have, in order to obtain
explanations, asked the same man to repeat it, and where he had given any
expression that seemed to vary from the more usual form of language, we
have observed that he kept as faithfully to such expressions as if he had
been reading from a book. We had little doubt that, as he confessed, he
had before him some recital that had produced an impression in his early
years.
As to the amount of this species of literature it is difficult to be
certain. The number of conundrums (1) we think does not much exceed
250. I find that I have written out more than 100 tales (2), and I have
listened to at least 150 others which I did not write out. I merely noted
new words and points in grammar. The traditional songs (3) may be as
numerous as the tales. Of the catch-word compositions (4), at least the
longer ones, I should not expect to find more than 50.
Before I left I had difficulty in finding new specimens of 1, 2, and
4. Mr. Buchanan, in his study of the language, was collecting specimens
of native literature at the same time, and we had begun to think that
we had nearly exhausted the field so far as the more pointed tales
were concerned. New reciters generally wished to give us what we had
already. Our contributors represented a wide district. My list included
Wayao, Machinga, Anyasa, Angulu, Achipeta, Achikunda, and Awisa. But the
tales seemed to be common to all these tribes. A Machinga was generally
familiar even with the tales of a native of Quilimane. Where this was not
so we considered the tale as merely local and of no antiquity.
We have given translations of several tales in the appendices.
ETHOLOGY.