Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/405

Rh. The eldest son of the chief was kept constantly supplied with milk, in order that he might grow up a strong man, and when he reached the age of manhood there began a series of conflicts between him and his father which only ended when the latter was knocked down, when custom compelled him to give up his position to his son. Up to the age of manhood the son was confined to his hut, and was not even allowed to wait upon himself, but received the milk from the hands of others. This so closely resembles some of the tabus imposed in many parts of the world on the young, more especially on women, that the confinement may have been among the Hottentots too something more than a mere accessory to the feeding-up process.

Another curious practice suggests a tabu of commensality. Although the cattle were so far the joint property of husband and wife that the consent of both was necessary before any were alienated, the women killed cattle for their own exclusive use. Unlike many South African tribes, the Korannas assigned to their women the duty of milking the cows, while the young men or boys were, as elsewhere, the herdsmen.

A long list of Koranna "clans" is given, but neither here nor in the case of the Bushmen do we learn precisely what constitutes membership of a clan. Like the Bushmen, they named some of these groups after animals, but no information is forthcoming as to the date at which these names were assumed, and the fact that most of them are Dutch suggests a late origin.

In Kidd's Essential Kafir it is mentioned that the chiefs' genealogies go further back than those of the ordinary man, for whom five or six generations are the limit. Mr. Stow shows us how far back some Bantu lists of ancestors go. The chief of the Bamangwato in 1879 could give the names of twenty-one of his forefathers. Of course, there is no check on the accuracy of such a list; but a careful comparison of a genealogy with the traditional history of the tribe itself and of its neighbours would go far to show how much reliance can be placed on records which antedate the appearance of the European in South Africa.

So much space is devoted by Mr. Stow to Bantu migrations that we hear little of their customs and beliefs; and what we do