Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/474

 440 Tradilioiis of the Jhioamia and Jhiskongo.

shaman. The enraged monarch ordered his mouth to be stitched up ; and the shaman replied : " Your mouth will be stitched up," That night the royal house was struck by lightning, and the king was scorched on his face and on one side of his body. He sent for the shaman, released him from his bonds, and enquired why there had been this storm. "Because," said Kigemuzi, "the god of thunder is angry at what you have done to me." Needless to say, ample reparation was made ; but we are not told whether the king abandoned his drastic law.^^ This king was the father of Mutesa, in whose reign Speke and Stanley reached the country.

It can hardly be contended that these traditions of the fall of the sun and moon, the assignation by the ghost of Kintu, and the repeated intervention of the gods in the affairs of the country are simple records of historical events. They may or may not enshrine actual memories. If they do, these memories have been transfigured by imagination in such a way that it is not possible with our present infor- mation to disentangle the facts by the summary process of rationalizing them.

Mr. Roscoe has given in two forms the pedigree of the kings. It would be very desirable to know how he obtained it, whether it is derived from one witness or from several, and if the latter, whether they were confronted together, how far they agreed, to what clans they belonged, and so forth. For its examination we have no such help as a contemporary written document, like that fortunately preserved in the Portuguese archives relating to Delagoa Bay. But that the genealogy is partly artificial we may fairly suspect. Beginning from Magembe, a son of Kimera, the mother's name is frequently during several generations that of the child with the feminine prefix Na-. Thus the mother of Kaima is named Nakaima, the mother of Ndaula is named Nandaula, and so forth. The prefix occurs no

^^ Roscoe, 227.