Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/508

 444 1^^^^ Banttc Ele^nent in Swahili Folklore.

deal of wax on his back " ; and in " The Rabbit and the Elephant," (Rattray's Some Folk-Lore Stories a?id Songs in Ckinyanja, pp. 139-42), the Tortoise says, — "Never mind, stick bees' wax on me, I shall catch him on this very spot." This is a point of contact with the Tar-baby episode, which, indeed, in the Ehwe version of the tale, as given by EUis,^ comes in here, though usually it occurs in a different connection.^

The well story in many cases ends by explaining how the Hare lost his tail. In the version before us it is apparent that this point has been lost sight of It is true that, when the elephant catches him by the legs, and, being asked to seize him by the tail instead, obligingly does so, the Hare escapes, but it is made clear later on that he has not left his tail behind him. In fact, the closing incidents of the story read as if the narrator had not fully grasped the points at issue. I give them exactly as they stand : —

" He (the Elephant) seized him, and the Hare ran away, and they pursued him and he entered a burrow. The elephant came and put in his hand ^^ and seized his ear, and the Hare said, — " He has seized a leaf" ["Tu'n loose dat stump-root an' ketch hold er me ! "] ; and he seized his leg, [and the Hare cried out], — " 0-0-0-0-0 ! he has seized a tree ! " And then he seized his tail and pulled him out. And he said, — "My masters, you will kill me, but do not kill me at once ; wait for me first till I fetch you some honey, — you stay here ! " "

It seems almost incredible that the animals should have consented to this after all that had come and gone ; but a


 * The Etve-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa, pp. 276-7.

^ In passing, I may remark that I have come across two curious examples of the Tar-baby incident introduced into variants of the " Bird that made Milk." One of these is from Tete, where the hero is the Hare ; the other is a Duala 7iidrchen collected by Herr Lederbogen, in which it is an edimo, — a species of goblin, — who is caught. Edimo is the same word as the Zulu iziiiiu (cannibal, or rather ogre) and the Suto modiino ; the same being occurs in Kikuyu stories under the name irimo.

^"This sort of thing constantly occurs, — the narrator apparently forgetting that his characters are not in human shape.