Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/502

 438 The Banttc Element in Swahili Folklore.

stalk of a pumpkin, which was his mzio. I was told myself by some Nyasaland natives that the Yao chief Chikumbu was invulnerable, except by a splinter of bamboo, — the case being put a little differently, as they said he had been charmed against everything else; and so, I believe, was Chibisa, who was shot with a sand- bullet.5

Coming now to the folk-tales, we find, as I have already said, that in the best-known collection, Steere's Swahili Tales, the Arab character decidedly predominates — indeed three of them, (as stated in Bishop Steere's Preface), actually occur in the Arabian Nights. There are, however, three which are certainly Bantu, and the others have mostly been Africanized by touches of local colour, etc., even where bits of African stories have not been worked into them. As all but three of these tales have been tabulated in the Folk-Lore Journal, (vol. vii., Appendix, pp. 59-80, 97-110), I shall not linger over them further than to remark, — (i) that no one, so far as I am aware, seems to have pointed out that " The Story of the Washerman's Donkey " is evidently of Indian origin, being identical with the Sumsu- mara Jataka of "The Monkey who left his Heart in a Tree," {Folk- Lore Journal, vol. iii., p. 128-30), and (2) that "The Hare, the Hyaena, and the Lion," and "The Hare and the Lion," are only versions of well-known and widespread episodes in what M. Junod calls the "Roman du Lievre." The former contains the incidents of planting gardens in partnership, and of the Hare entrapping the Lion, which, in this exact form, (that of getting him stuck fast in a narrow cave), I have met with in another instance, of which I have mislaid the reference. The incident of " Whoever stops, let him be eaten," does not seem to have much point; it may perhaps be a dim recollection of something better preserved in a Tete story collected by

'See The Natives of British Central Africa, p. 82, and Scott, Mang'anfa J)ictionary, s.v. viankwala.