Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/497

 The Bantu Element in Swahiii Folklore. 433

parts of the world, — traditional usages of immemorial antiquity may be figuring under Arabic names as accredited parts of Moslem ritual.

Before passing on to consider some of these points of custom, it may be well to make quite clear who the Waswahili are, for, in consequence of their extensive travels beyond the limits of their original territory, and the fact that their language is perhaps better known by name to Europeans than any other African tongue, there may be a little confusion in our notions on the subject. Of course, as we know, the word Swahiii is not a national designation ; it simply means " the coast people," being derived from the Arabic word for the coast, and therefore must have been first imposed by the Arabs. By what name the genuine, original Swahiii, whose head- quarters seem to have been the island of Pata and the adjacent coast near Lamu, called themselves before the settlements of the Persians and Arabs, I have hitherto been unable to find out. It occurs to me as just possible that Wa Shenzi, which now, in the mouths of the coast people, simply means " pagans," or " bush niggers," may have been a tribal name, as it seems difficult to get a satisfactory etymology for it in Swahiii. Even if Krapf was right in spelling it Washinzi and deriving it from shifida, " to conquer," it would mean, not " the conquered," as he makes it, but "the conquerors." In his day it seems to have been used as a tribal name, and applied to the people now known as Wabondei.^ In Dcsturi za Waswahili, which is compiled entirely from trustworthy native accounts, we are informed that "the meaning of "Waswahili" is "the people of the coast," and the sum of their customs is one from Amu (or Lamu) to Mvita (Mombasa) and from the beginning of the German coast, that is Tanga harbour, to Lindi."

^ This again only means "those who live in the plain." Their language is distinct from present-day Swahiii, but they have to a great extent adopted the latter.

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