Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/519

 The Bantu Element in Swahili Folklore. 455

by the women, Mbuya had probably heard it from her mother, and in that case it had come from the Shire Highlands, or perhaps still further east. This suggests the possibility of its having an Arab origin after all, the Yaos having for many years been in touch with the Moslems of the coast, many of them indeed making profession of Mohammedanism. Their caravans, conveying either slaves or more legitimate merchandise, were constantly journeying up and down, and there are several stories extant in Yao which are Arab tales altered almost beyond recognition. Still I cannot help thinking that M. Jacottet's version and the one I am about to give show the original form, and, hoping that a fuller form may yet be recovered, I give the following translation of the tale as I received it:—

" A frog adzed a woman out of (the trunk of) a tree, and made her his wife. And he put a mpande on her heart. The chief took his wife away from him ; — her name was Njali, the wife of the frog. The chief took her away from him. And he (the frog) sent a wild pigeon to fetch the mpande, and she " (the text does not show whether the chief or the wife is meant, but a comparison with the SwahiU variant suggests the latter), — " refused. And the (pigeon) returned, and he sent it again, and it went. And it brought the mpande, and the woman died ; and she was changed into a kachere tree, that woman, she was changed into a tree. It (the story) is iinished."

A mpande is a disc about the size of a half-crown, cut from the flat part of a large sea-shell and greatly valued as an ornament or a charm, or both, by the inland tribes. I have only seen them once or twice worn by men, on thongs or bangles attached below the knee. I can find no other instance of this object figuring as a life-token, but Mr. Barnes says that at Kotakota the word means an " operculum, worn as a charm." Those I saw did not look like opercula, but were evidently the top of a spiral shell