Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/518

 454 '^^^^ Bantu Element in Swahili Folklore.

And the sultan was quite confounded. And Makame stayed at home, and this is the end of the story."

It is obvious that this tale contains many exotic elements, and, did it stand alone, we might perhaps set it down as of non-African origin. But the two variants with which I am acquainted seem to suggest that it may have a Bantu original which in this form has been overlaid with Arabic accretions. One of these variants is that given by M. Jacottet in Etudes stir les langiies dii Hani Zambeze, under the title " Le lievre et sa fernmer Here it is the Hare, not a man, who makes himself a wife out of a log of wood. The process of giving life to the figure is not detailed. The chief hears of the woman from some of his people who pass through the village, and sends to fetch her in her husband's absence. The Hare comes home and finds her gone. He gets a drum and goes to the chief's place, beating it and singing, —

" Ndindi 1 ndindi ! ka ndindi ngoma Ka ndindi n^omaka ndindi ngoma 1 " (They have taken away my wife ! She was changed back into a log of wood.)

The other story is one which I obtained in 1894 at Ntumbi in Nyasaland. It is unfortunately very short, and probably imperfect, but quite recognisable in its main features. It was published in the (now defunct) Zeitschrift fiir Afrikanische und Ozeanische Sprachen (Vol. III., No. 4, 1897), ^^d M. Jacottet refers to it in the work already mentioned as being identical with the story just quoted. I am not quite certain of the provenance of this story. The district where it was obtained is pretty far inland, being some thirty miles west of the Shire river and at the foot of the Kirk mountains, but the population is very much mixed, and the girl who related it to me is the daughter of a Nyanja (or possibly Chewa) father and a Yao mother. Now, as these tales are usually handed on