Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/328

 288 not stated, as it is on a similar occasion, later on), came upon them, as if from a distance, asked what they were doing, and offered to help. He took up a pick and set to work; but before long the iron came out of the handle. So he called to the Giraffe, and asked for the loan of his leg to serve as a handle. The Giraffe lent his leg, and in a very short time it was broken, and the Rabbit ran away, declaring himself as he ran. He now took refuge in a white-ant heap, and the episode was repeated with two differences, viz. that, instead of getting past his enemy by a stratagem, he found an opening into another burrow, and so escaped; and that, when the pick came out of the handle, he this time proposed to fix it into the head of the Elephant. After this second failure the pursuers were (naturally) disheartened, and said: "We are tired" (twakatara, which is the Zulu sakatala), "and those who helped us, they have been killed. Let us stop." So they went home.

The Rabbit and the "Muna" both, in this story, exhibit an engaging artlessness, the former asking directly for what he wishes, the latter unsuspiciously granting it. Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox are cuter. (Is this owing to the stimulating air of the New World?) "'I don't keer w'at you do wid me. Brer Fox,' sezee, 'so you don't fling me in dat brier-patch. Roas' me, Brer Fox,' sezee, 'but don't fling me in dat brier-patch' sezee . . . . . Co'se Brer Fox wanter hurt Brer Rabbit bad as he kin, so he cotch 'im by de behime legs en slung 'im right in de middle er de brier-patch . . . ."

M. Junod, who belongs to the (Swiss) Mission Romande, and resided for some years at Lourenço Marques, has, in his large collection of Ronga tales, two fairly complete sequences of adventures, which he entitles "Le Roman du Lièvre." The Tar-Baby episode comes into the first of these as follows. The "Lièvre" having, by means of a false alarm of war, repeatedly robbed the ground-nut patches of a certain village, the inhabitants become suspicious, and lay a trap for him. The first step is to