Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/512

 474 Pokomo Folklore.

a good many other variants, but am unable to give them from memory. The chameleon story resenibles the one current among the Wasanye, and published by Capt. Barrett in The Journal of the Royal A nthropological Institute? The Pokomo version is as follows: —

"The chameleon {rumvwi) and the dog had a dispute. God (Muungu) had invited them to a feast, and, when they got ready for the journey, the dog said to the chameleon, — " How will you be able to go? I shall go first, and by the time you get there I shall be sitting on the chair (of honour)." The chameleon replied, — " Yes ! if it please God, I shall arrive." They slept. In the morning they started. But, when the dog sprang (forward), the chameleon climbed up his tail. Well ! the dog ran quickly, in order to get ahead of the chameleon ; and, when he arrived, he saw that, at the (places of the) feast, there were bones on the ground. As he was looking on the ground, (his attention absorbed by the bones), his tail came close to the chair, and the chameleon climbed on to it and said, — " Here I am, sir ! " {Ndimi huyu, Bwana, lit. " It is I, this one"). And the dog began to pant till his tongue hung out, and the chameleon was a great (person) and sat on the chair. And so the dog went on eating bones on the ground to this day."

Having asked Andrea to write out some more stories for me, and supplied him with an exercise book for the purpose, I was considerably disappointed when he brought me two tales in Swahili and certainly not indigenous,— indeed one was no other than the Merchant of Venice ! As he had spent some time at the training-school carried on by the Neukirchen Mission at Lamu (now given up), and can read a little English, I thought it possible that he might have become acquainted with the story, of Shakespeare's play through the medium of some elementary reading-book; but he tells me that he heard it from a Banyan at Kipini, and that it is certainly "a story of theirs" {i.e. the Hindus). 'Vol. xli. (191 1), p. 39.