Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/512

 44^ The Bantu Element in Swahili Folklore.

vom Hasen und der Hyana"). I cannot now examine these versions in detail, as I wish to say a few words about two or three fndrchen in this collection which seem to me highly curious.

The first of these is to be found in Kibaraka, under the title of "The Story of the Children and the Zimwi!' Zimwi is evidently the same word as the Zulu izhnii and Suto niodimo, — which are usually translated " cannibal " ; but which, as is plain from some fairly well- known stories, implies something more than a mere human anthropophagist, the amazimu being in some respects preternatural, but also preternaturally stupid, like our northern giants. A Blantyre native whom I asked for an explanation of the Dzimwe could get no further than that it was a creature in a story ; another native, at Likoma, wrote that the word means " sometimes an elephant, sometimes an evil spirit." The Arabicized Swahili consider it to be equivalent to jini. The first part of the story is very similar to the Suto " Tselane," to " The Child in the Drum " (given by Mr. D. Kidd in Savage Childhood), to Dr. McCall Theal's "The Cannibal Bird," and to a Duala variant collected by Herr Lederbogen, not to mention others ; while the opening has touches which localise it on the coast, and the words sung by the child are, so far as I can make anything of them, Yao. The end is one I do not remember in any story of this type, but it has an interesting resemblance which I shall note presently.

"Some children went to a river to look for cowries. One found one cowry, and laid it on a rock. And they searched and found and went home ; but that child forgot his shell, and, as it was a very fine one, he asked his companions to go back with him and fetch it. They said, — "Go and fetch it, and we will wait for you," and he went and sang : —

Cheche cheche chambalatnanda. Little by little it has dawned ; Ngalajangu naliwele. My shell, I have forgotten it.