Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/339

 Correspondence. 309

de Kor61u ; celui-ci veut le cheval du jeune homme, Avant d' en venir aux armes, les deux heros echangent des tirades orgueilleuses en vers: Kor61u se nomme; son fils le reconnaissant a son nom, saute de cheval et les deux hommes s'embrassent. Ceci n'est qu'un incident du roman lequel continue par d'autres aventures.

Une chanson populaire allemande de la province de Brande- bourg, A?i der Weichsel gegen Osten, developpe ce theme d'une fagon moderne et bien prussienne. Un soldat en faction tire sur son propre pere, sans le savoir, parceque celui-ci a laisse trois appels sans reponse.^ Peut-etre le motif de cette chanson est-il independent de la tradition : car les combinaisons de I'invention romanesque sont en nombre limite et I'imagination est partout creatrice.

H. Gaidoz.

Fetish-Worship in Central Africa. (A fife, pp. 2, 61.)

I have to hand the Editor's letter, per Mr. Lovett, with inquiries regarding my note on Fetish-Worship in Central Africa, which he read before the Folk-Lore Society [loth December, 1902]. I reply to these queries in their order.

I. [Are remote ancestors worshipped, or only the recently dead ?]

Worship is confined to recent ancestors almost entirely — generally to those of the generation immediately preceding. Among the Yaos and the Angoni, the chief or headman who has recently died, steps into the place occupied by his predecessor, and is worshipped in turn. The chief whose spirit hitherto was the object of worship is now for the most part neglected, and all homage is paid to the spirit of the man recently dead.

For example : there is on the top of Mount Soche, three miles from Blantyre, the grave of an old Mang'anja chief called Kan- komba. He was the chief of the country when the Yaos came into it in Livingstone's time and drove out the original Mang'anja

' Cite dans K. Reuschel, FbllshindNf/ie Sh-ezfzn^^c, {Dresden, 1903), p. 161, d'apres la Zeitschrijt jiir Volkskunde, T. IV., p. 212.