Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/465

 Traditions of I he Baoanda and BusJwngo. 431

griots used to assemble before liiiii and his courtiers, and their chief sang the praises of the kin^^^s from the legendary founder of the dynasty. Certain families of them indeed kept more or less faithfully in memory the succession of kings and the most remarkable events of their reigns.^ Among the Bushongo (frequently known as the Bakuba) of the Congo basin a recent expedition found what is perhaps a special form of this institution. There the know- ledge of a number of facts alleged to be historical is not the common property of the people, but is jealously preserved as a precious secret by highly placed personages, A mem- ber of the royal famih-, the son of a deceased monarch, is the chief of these functionaries ; and by virtue of his office he has precedence over all other royal descendants in the male line. He is called the Moaridi, and is assisted in relating the legends of the past by another official, called the Alene Molomo. These legends were imparted to the members of the expedition, apparently as a great favour, in an assembly of the king and the principal dignitaries, and may be, as Mr, Torday in reporting them observes, considered as an official account.^ I shall deal with some of them hereafter. Let it suffice here to observe that the existence of a body of traditional narratives locked up ifi the bosoms of a close corporation, who alone have the right to know them, or to divulge them on stated or special occasions, affi^rds no guarantee for their accuracy, or even for their substantial truth. Rather such narratives are exposed to special dangers, from which narratives openly known and canvassed in familiar daily converse are com- paratively free,

. But surely the most original way of perpetuating the recollection of former events is that practised in Uganda. It is described by the Rev. J, Roscoe, a missionary who

-II. Gaden, Kev. cTEthnog. et de Social., iii., 119.

^Torday and Joyce, Xotes Ethnographiques : Les Bushongo (Brussels, 191 1), 17, 19. 56-