Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/511

 Pokotno Folklore. 473

who do so are seized with illness {wanapata ujzva3i),a.nd some (if I have rightly apprehended the explanation of the verb ku disa}na-d{saifia), become paralysed and lose the use of their limbs. But some have boldly grappled with him, and if, in wrestling, a man can tear ofif a bit of the kitunusis cloth, his fortune is made. "He puts it away in his kidzavianda and becomes rich." Kidzauianda is explained at Ngao as being a covered basket made of viiyaa (leaves of the Hyphccne palm); no one makes them now, but "our grandfathers used to keep their cloth and things in them." This seems to show that no one in this generation has successfully wrestled with the kitimusi. One wonders if he is akin to the cliirmvi of Nyasaland, with whom the lonely traveller must wrestle, if he would pass him in safety ; but the advantage gained by overcoming the cliiriiwi is that he shows you all sorts of medicinal herbs and teaches you their use.s.

The Wapokomo appear to have a large stock of the usual Bantu folk-tales, in which, as elsewhere, the hare {kitnuguwe) plays the principal part. They have not as yet been collected, the only texts hitherto published being the tradi- tions of tribal origins already referred to and the legends of Liongo Fumo, printed by Bocking in the ZeitscJirift fiir afrikanisciie 7ind ozeanisclie SpiacJien, II. i. pp. 33-9, and by Krafift in his Pokomo-Gratnviatik. The old man of whom I first enquired said that there were such stories, but, since the people had taken to reading, they had forgotten them ; and the missionaries whom I asked said at once that they had never troubled to enquire into such things. However, with a little coaxing, the old man just referred to (Abadula) dictated the chameleon story of which the translation is given below, and one of the teachers, (Andrea or Bwashehe^ from whom I have obtained a good deal of useful informa- tion), followed it up with a hare story, which seems to be a variant of the Yao " Roasted Seeds."^ I think that there are

2 H
 * Duff Macdonald, Afncana, vol. ii., pp. 3401.