Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/481

 Traditions of the Baganda and Bnshongo. 447

would be made by a woinan or under a woman's auspices, aid it is obvious that the story is an astiological invention, like the legends of the previous period.

During subsequent reigns nothing is recorded save the invention of masks and the forging of figures of men and animals, both of them peaceful achievements, down to the reign of the ninet)'-third monarch, Shamba Bolongongo, the national hero, under whom the power of the Bushongo reached its apogee. Yet even he was a man of peace. His greatest performances were a peaceful journey, accompanied only by three slaves, among the neighbouring peoples, " to learn their virtues and defects," and the consequent intro- duction into his own kingdom of the arts of weaving and embroidery, of tobacco, and of the game of mancala. How he performed the journey "is a mystery." It is indeed; for some of the tribes whom he visited are cannibals, and would have been delighted to secure a supply of fresh meat in the persons of four defenceless travellers. He also reformed the internal organization of the kingdom, abolished the use of the throvving-knife as a weapon, limited the soldiers' arms to one knife apiece,and restricted their function to that of a police force. This is the first time we hear of warriors ; and no evidence is supplied of the primitive use of the throwing-knife — a many-branched piece of iron, possibly developed from the boomerang, and unsuitable for a weapon of war, especially in a land thickly clad in forest. Indeed it was for this very reason that Shamba abolished its use. We have been previously told that one of his pre- decessors, Miele, about a hundred years earlier, was a cele- brated smith who forged figures of men and animals ; we now learn that Shamba was the first to cause a statue to be sculptured. The story goes that he had his own statue carved, seated at a mancala-board, in order that his suc- cessors might remember him and his laws, and that the view of his statue might give them inspiration and new courage. There are in fact five ancient statues in existence,