Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/290

 254 Reviews.

by Mrs. Routledge (pp. 283-4), and involves a point of great interest, I make no apology for quoting it : —

" In the beginning the father of our people, named Mumbere, came out of his country and travelled day after day until he came to the sun -rising. Upon his arrival there the sun asked him, "Where do you come from? " He replied, "I do not know; I am lost." Thereupon he asked him, "Where are you going?" and was answered " I do not know." Then the sun said to him, " Because you have seen where I come from, out of the ocean, which no man is supposed to do — if you do not want to die you must call me ' ' Kigango." " This means " The most high," or " The Great Over-all." Moreover the sun gave him a strip of meat, telling him to eat a tiny piece each day as he travelled many days' journey towards the sun-setting, and that this would be sufificient food for him until he arrived at the country where he was to dwell. When the food was finished he had arrived at the country of the Mbere, near Mount Kenya.

There he found a woman, married her, and had born unto him three sons and three daughters. When they grew up, the father called them together, and placing on the ground before them a spear, a bow and arrows, and a cultivating stick, told them to choose. One chose the spear, and his children became the Okabi, or the Masai tribe ; the second chose the bow, and his children became the Kamba ; while the third chose the cultivating stick, and his children are the Gikuyu. Afterward, when the Masai wanted vegetable food, they came to the Gikuyu for it, giving them in return sheep and cattle ; it is thus we have flocks and herds like the Masai, and also carry spears like them as well as our own swords.

After Mumbere had lived to a great age, he called his descendants together, telling them to; bring him meat and receive his blessing, as on the second day following he was to die. Accordingly on that day he called the sun by its customary name ' riua ' and died." '

The word for " sun " given in Mrs. Hinde's Kikuyu Vocabulary is njiia^ but the forms erua and eruwa occur elsewhere ; cf. also the Yao lyuwa. I can find no indication as to whether any of the Akikuyu use the word kigango for the sun at the present day. This notable example of tabu, whatever may be the real facts covered by the legend, (no doubt an attempt to explain a local prohibition for which the reason had been forgotten), may help to throw some light on the differentiation of words in the Bantu tongues. There is a remarkable uniformity, all down the eastern side of the continent, in the use of the root juba (or, according to Meinhof, ywvd), varying locally according to well-ascertained phonetic laws,

'^/ourtial of the African Society, loc. cif., p. 236.