Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/429

 Reviews. 375

it are looked on as a powerful juju, of course a non-Mohammedan view. The stories of most interest as folklore are Nos. i, 6, i6, and 2 2. No. i is the only one translated by Mr, Harris, and is a real fairy story, the plot of which is probably borrowed from an Arab story-teller, much of the local colouring being North African. Story No. 6 is interesting as giving a variant of a story of the Catskin type given from Tangier in vol. xix., pp. 443-53,^ and may be translated as follows: —

" Story of a certain king and his wife. The wife died. People asked, — "Can the king remain un-married? Get a wife for him!" The alkali (native corruption of al cadi) said to the king, — " Take off your sandals, summon all the women of the town, let them fit on your sandals ; she who they fit exactly shall be your wife." The women were called. All put on the sandals, but they fitted no one exactly. The people said, — "Call your daughter!" She was called. She came and tried on the sandals. They fitted her exactly. The king remained seated ; he thought hard. He asked, — "How can my daughter become my wife?" The girl retired to her room, and wept. A certain man came to her. He asked, — "Girl, what ails you?" She replied, — "The people say my father is my husband." He answered, — "Stop crying. Bring me a measure full of gold, a thousand zambar." (Zam-ber, or the big Zam, probably once a gold weight in use in Songhai, and now used in Hausa as the word for looo.) She brought it. He went off and forged for her a golden lantern. Of that lamp he made for her a house and fitted it with a lock and key. He gave it to her. He said,— "Here it is, take it, and put it away. When your father comes to your room, get into the lantern and lock it." That same day her father came. When she heard him she got into the lantern. He looked for her and missed her. The king fell down; he died, etc. etc."

No. 16 is a purely Hausa story. The kura or hyena quite takes the place of the wolf of our nursery stories, and has besides a dash of the cunning of the fox in the native estimation. As Hausa tales are little known, I translate this one also :

In a certain town, there lived a maiden, called Karu. She had four elder brothers. When anyone came demanding her in marriage, she would say, — "Let us go to the keikua tree and have a talk."^ Now the keikua was called ' the dye-pit keikua.'

1 Miss F. Kirby Green, who furnished the Tangier story, writes that it was told to her by the English wife of a very holy Skereef, who had heard it in a harem from a black slave girl. — Ed.

2 Practically all towns in Nigeria are walled. The dye pits are usually 5-600 yards away from one of the gates, and, as a rule, near a tree. They are usually gossiping and trysting places.