Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/514

 450 The B antic Element in Swahili Folklore.

of people are yours ? Vv^e do not know them." But it said, — "You have shut them up inside." And they took the pumpkin and threw it into a big fire, and it was burnt up so that only ashes were left, and they threw them away. So they let out the children, who then went home to their mothers." ^^

In a Shambala story,^*^ which is a curious variant of the " Swallow myth " exemplified in Casalis' Kainmapa et Litaolane, some children playing in the fields see a huge gourd and remark on its size, which seems to offend it, for it replies, — " Pluck me, and I will pluck you." The parents refuse to believe the story, and the gourd continues to grow till it is "as large as a house," swallows the whole population of the village, except one woman, and retires into a lake. The woman has a son who grows up, kills the pumpkin by shooting it with arrows, — (it roared, "so that they could hear it at Vuga "), — and then cuts it open and lets the people out. Of course there is no trace of the swallowing in the zimwi story, but the notion of the gourd or pumpkin in this connection is curious.

I must content myself with a bare mention of another story, which is interesting from several points of view, — "The Husband who was a Jinn" {Mumejini), — and pass on to a mdrcheti in Dr. Velten's earlier collection, which has the title " Sermala na Hirizi " (the Carpenter and the Amulet). Both these words are Arabic, and, if the story stood alone, we might conclude that the whole of it had a like origin, but I think we shall find on examination that this is not the case. The translation in full is : —

"There was once a carpenter named Makame, whose work was to cut logs into shape. He went away into the bush and shaped

^^Cf. P. C. Smith, A Huancy Stories, " Ticky-Picky Boom-Boom," p. 62.

^^Seidel, Geschichten nnd Lieder der Afrikaner, p. 174. It is also given in Baset's Contes Poptdaires d' Afriqite, p. 297. This is in many respects a most useful collection ; but it must be pointed out that its classification of Bantu tribes is not always accurate. Nos. 114 and 115, given as "Zoumbo,"are really Yao, and should, as such, have been placed under LX., while LXII. and LXV. ("Nyassa"and "Chinyanjaor Mang'anja") are identical. Otji-Hereio and Ova-Herero have likewise been wrongly placed under two separate headings.