Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/509

Rh certain confiding simplicity is inherent in the African,—till it is abused once too often. "He went away to a distance and brought a jiwe la Manga," (literally "a stone of Arabia"; according to Steere it means "a piece of freestone"), and said to them,—"Open your mouths, the honey is coming!" He burnt them all up and they died; and there remained only he and the Tortoise, and they took all their gardens, and lived in peace and contentment," (raha mustarehe, a characteristic expression in Arabic). There is no reason why the "piece of freestone," (or, as Madan's Dictionary gives it, "whetstone"), should have burnt them, whatever other distressing symptoms it might have given rise to, but in a Nyanja tale of which I have a fragmentary version in MS. the Hare induces the Elephant to swallow a red-hot stone, a trick played on the Lion by the Jackal in one of the Hottentot stories collected by Bleek. The incident occurs in another form in a Kinga tale.

The above story begins simply by saying "There were the beasts in the forest, and they were thirsty," but the variant referred to just now, which is entitled "The Hare and the Banana Tree," opens with the statement that "there was a Sultan and at his town there was no water." The parallel versions vary a good deal in this respect; some represent the Lion, or "the Chief," as giving orders to dig the well, and others merely assume a concerted action on the part of the "Animals." The incidents which follow are much the same as in the other version, though given in greater detail, except that the two successive guardians of the water are the Hyæna and the Lion, and that the latter actually springs on the Hare and seizes him before being beguiled with the honey. There is also the additional point that the Hare gives a reason for binding them,—that the honey is so strong that, unless tied to a tree, they will be unable to stand upright after eating it. Being caught, he is brought