Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/296

 26o Reviews.

in West Africa is not large. In the second tale a hunter disposes of his creditors, — the cock, bush-cat, goat, leopard, and another hunter, — through their successive slaughter of each other from a trick like that in a Hausa tale.^ In the eighth story a vain and disobedient daughter marries a skull from spirit land, who borrows parts to make up a complete body from all his friends there, and returns them on his way home after the wedding ; this is a version of a story found also in Sierra Leone ^ and amongst the Yoruba.'' The twenty-fifth story (" Concerning the Leopard, the Squirrel, and the Tortoise") is a completer form of a story collected in Jamaica,^ and the twenty-ninth (" How the Tortoise overcame the Elephant and the Hippopotamus") has a variant in a Hausa tale.*^ In the beast fables the tortoise is the chief animal, as amongst the Yoruba, and the only reference to the spider seems to be in the third story, in which an old childless king marries one of the spider's daughters because they always had plenty of chil- dren. Unfortunately one does not feel sure that the tales are close and unornamented renderings from the originals, and this doubt is strengthened by comparing Mr. Dayrell's versions of No. XXIII. and an incident in No. XII. with Calabar versions taken down from a native by Mr. C. J. Cotton.^ Moreover, there are no particulars given of the narrators or their localities, and such humorous "morals" as " always have pretty daughters, as no matter how poor they may be, there is always the chance that the king's son may fall in love with them, . . ." are not obviously native. Nevertheless, this is a book for the folklorist to buy, as the body of the tales is undoubtedly native.

A. R. Wright,

"^ Ante, pp. 2II-2. A better-told version from Calabar, — of a worm, cock, wild cat, leopard, and hunter, — appears in the Journal of the Africa7i Society, vol. iv., pp. 307-8.

''Cronise and Ward, Cuntiie Rabbit, Mr. Spider and the other Beef, pp. 178-86 (" Marry the Devil, there's the Devil to pay").


 * Ellis, 7/^1? Yoruba- speaking Peoples etc., pp. 267-9.

"P. C. Smith, Annancy Stories, pp. 51-4 (" Paarat, Tiger an' Annancy ").

'^ Ante, p. 203.

^ /oiirnal of the African Society, vol. v., pp. 194-5.