Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/288

 252 Reviews.

them, is traced to their connection with popular superstition and customs of heathen origin, — such as the hanging of clothes or hair on a tree by a holy well, (authenticated in Sweden within the last generation), and the sword-dance, with thQ accompanying killing or drowning of a king, still symbolised in Sweden by sprinkling a bystander with water. A short summary follows of the chief popular festivals, — Yule, the favourite day of which was St. Lucy; Easter ; Whitsuntide, originally a spring or May feast ; Trinity, kept by dancing all night round a holy well; Rogation; and the autumn feasts, of which Martinmas remained popular in spite of its nearness to St. Lucy. A few melodies are given in a supplement.

L. Winifred Faraday.

Ethnology of A-Kamba and other East African Tribes. By C. W. HoBLEY. Cambridge: University Press, 19 10. 8vo, pp. xvi+ 172. Map and ill.

The A-Kamba are one of the most important tribes of the East African Protectorate, their territory forming, roughly speaking, a triangle, of which the apex, lying somewhat to the east of Mount Kenya, nearly reaches the Upper Tana, while its base extends along the Uganda Railway from Mtito Andei to Kiu. Their neighbours on the west are the Akikuyu, and on the east the Wasania and Waboni. Mr. Hobley thinks that "they are the purest Bantu race in British East Africa." The indications of Masai or other influences which come out here and there in Mr. Hobley's notes, — such as the use of the name Engai side by side with Aluhmgu (p. 85), the system of cattle-brands and arrow-marks (pp. 24, 46), and perhaps some of the "burial" customs, — are to be accounted for by borrowing. (On the wide-spread imitation of the Masai, which has also been remarked by German writers, see p. 132. Muoitn, the name for a wizard or medicine-man (pp. 93, 96), can scarcely, as it stands, be Bantu).

One section of the A-Kamba say that they " originally came from a country to the south of Kilimanjaro," while others trace their origin to the Giriama country north of Mombasa (between