Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/261

 Reviews. 223

Popidaires, July, 1895) from one Daniel Magudu, at Antioka, in the Koseni country, in which the bat figures in place of the swallow. The present reviewer, in 1894, obtained two versions of the same story in Mang'anja — one from a boy whose home was near the foot of the Murchison Cataracts, the other from two children at a place about forty miles west of the Shire. Both these versions are imperfect, especially the latter, and, in fact, they only became intelligible on comparison with M. Junod's fuller one. It may not be without interest to give here the first of these, which keeps the Swallow but substitutes the Cock (ta7Ji- bald) for the Hare. (In the second both actors are different.)

" The cock and the swallow made friendship with one another, and the swallow said, ' Come to my house.' And the cock went, and found the swallow sitting on the 7isanja (the stage erected above the fireplace in native huts, where meat, &c., is hung to dry in the smoke). And the swallow's wife took the pot of pumpkins oif the fire, and the swallow flew up on high ; and he took pumpkins and gave them to the cock, and the cock said, ' You must come to my house.' "

Though related, so far, without apparent break, the story appears somewhat mysterious. A reference to M. Junod will help us out. The swallow who, had, on visiting the cock (or, as it is here, the hare), been regaled with gourds (or pumpkins), seasoned with almonds, inquires as to the cooking of the viand, and, on being told that it is boiled in water, replies that " Chez moi, on ne cuit pas ce legume avec de I'eau ; on le cuit avec ma propre sueur," and goes on to say that he gets into the pot and is cooked with the gourds, assuring the hare that the process does him no sort of harm. The hare declines to believe, and is invited to come and try. Then the story goes on as above. When we are told that the cock " found " the swallow sitting on the nsanj'a, we are probably to understand that he did not see him, as, under the circumstances, it is exceedingly improbable that he would. The swallow then, when the pumpkins were being poured out of the pot, "flew up on high," and reappeared through the cloud of steam to assure his credulous friend that he had been cooked and was none the worse. They then ate, and he returned the swallow's invitation.

" And the cock went home and said to his wife, ' You must put me into the pot with the mponda (gourds),' and she (did so