Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/289

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known Wasandawi, Wambugu, Wambulunge, and Watatum of German East Africa.^ We gather that the hair of the Akikuyu is not woolly but curly (pp, 19, 26, 27); but this is scarcely evident from the photographs, — except Plate CXII. It must be said, however, that most of the heads shown are either shaved or elaborately dressed, so that it is difficult to tell. This important racial characteristic would certainly seem to tell in favour of a Masai mixture.

We own to a doubt of the etymology suggested on p. 19. It is contrary to all analogy to find ki- as a locative prefix ; and the fact of A- being prefixed to it, shows that ki is part of the root ; otherwise the people would be called Akuyu. True, we sometimes find double prefixes {e.g. Wa-nya-ruanda), but -ki- does not seem to occur in this position. Mr. H. R. Tate ^ asserts, on the authority of Dr. Henderson, that the name should be written as A-Gikuyu, as k before another k (and several other consonants) becomes g. It may seem hypercritical to add that, while the authors have in the main followed sound principles in their spelling of native names and words, we can see no reason for the retention of the apostrophe after initial m or n {e.g. M'kihiyu, n^giio), and "Ke-ny-a" is surely misleading. The_y is consonantal and nya makes but one syllable, — otherwise we should write — " Ke-ni-a." In the division of words, the rule that all Bantu syllables are open has been persistently ignored: thus, on p. xxiii., "Wa-nan-ga" should be "Wa-na-nga," "Ka-ran-ja" should be "Ka-ra-nja" etc. The unnecessary r inserted in tnali on p. xxiv., suggests a doubt whether " N'jarge " should not read " Njage " : the r sound occurs in Kikuyu, but is unlikely before any consonant, — except possibly w.

Mr. Tate, in the paper just referred to, gives the legend told by the "Southern Gikuyu," {i.e. Kinyanjui's people in the country N.W. of Nairobi), to explain their own origin and that of the Akamba and Masai. As it is different from any of those recorded

^ See Meinhof, Linguist is che Stiidien in Ostafrika, x., xi., in Transactions oi the Berlin Oriental Seminary for 1906 (Dritte Abteilung : Afrikanische Sttidien, pp. 294-333). The volume for 1909 contains a Sandawi vocabulary : Versuch eines Worlerbuchs fiir Kissandatii, von Hauptmann Nigmann (pp. 127-130). This language has several clicks,

"^Journal of the African Society, April, 19 10, p. 237.