Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/479

 Traditions of the Baganda and Ihiskongo. 445

were ignorant of the art of producing fire, and went besides absolutely naked. At last the Creator was good enough to supplement his previous revelation of the art of smelting iron by communicating in a dream to one Kerikeri how to make fire by friction. This event Mr. Torday dates at the year 780. At the same time a man named Ishota invented bark-cloth, which does not seem to have needed the personal interference of the Creator.

It is, of course, quite possible that the tribes of the Congo may have known the use of fire without knowing how to produce it. The Andaman Islanders, who claim to have had fire from the beginning of time, were ignorant how to make it. Sir Harry Johnston thinks that the pygmies of the Congo basin never attained this knowledge, though they constantly used fire, borrowing it at need from the taller races ; and he hints that the latter may have derived it ready made from natural causes or acquired it from other peoples.-^ But when the invention of fire is dated, and we are asked to regard the date as an established fact of history, it is a challenge we cannot refuse, to examine the record and enquire whether it is probable that the art of smelting was practised, and weapons and implements regularly fashioned, for two centuries before it was dis- covered how to cause fire by rubbing two sticks together. If the Bushongo learned from another people how to smelt iron, is it not likely that they also learned from them how to make fire } That they invented both the one and the other for themselves is improbable ; and the story of the dreams nobody will assert to be true. Be this as it may, it cannot be denied that throughout the period with which we have been dealing we are in the realm of pure fable. Not a single occurrence is in any true sense historical. Not a single personage can be affirmed with any confidence to have existed at all. All of them have been jnvented more or less consciously by way of explaining the

-^Johnston, George Crenfell and the Congo (IQOS), ii., 629.