Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/64

46 for the former I must leave this an open question, but for the latter there is strong evidence against such an assumption. The most un-African shapes are found amongst tribes related to the Bushongo, who have never been under the influence of the traveller king, and who are the most conservative and most averse to strangers of all people I have ever met. Furthermore, there is evidence that in other parts of Africa the legends of the creation equally resemble the stories of Genesis, and express the same ideas, put into a negro shape. I call your attention, in connection with this, to the tenth chapter of Mr. Dennett's Nigerian Studies.

There is another interesting fact to be considered. According to tradition the divine ancestor of the tribe was a white man, and this might suggest that it was some North-African Mussulman who was the founder of the nation. This is not more absurd than the fact that the rajah of Sarawak or the king of the Cocos islands should be Englishmen. But this again is difficult to bring into accordance with the fact that the loom was only introduced within historical times, viz. the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Then there is the man Woto. It cannot have failed to strike you that, differing quite considerably from each other, both accounts make Woto the moving spirit of the migration. In connection with him I must mention to you two incidents that impressed me greatly. One occurred in the country of the Bashilele, an independent branch of the Bushongo, where I could obtain no information of the past of these people owing to their reluctance to discuss these matters with the first white man they ever saw; so I threw out baits and mentioned names like Bumba, Etoch, and Moelo, but without the slightest effect; but, when I happened to name Woto, there was a general outcry of recognition.

The other puzzled me still more. The stories have been