Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/484

 450 Traditions of the Baganda and Bushongo.

by means of a spell, caused the trees to open and give birth to a swarm of little beings, from whom the Batwa, or Congo Pygmies, are descended. The trees from which they came out are still to be seen. He also became the father of all the Baluba peoples. They are widely spread to the south of the Bushongo. It should be said too that Woto was the first to teach men to point with the index finger instead of the whole hand, and that the hideous custom of cicatrising the body practised by the Bushongo women is ascribed to the wounds inflicted by Woto's wives on themselves in their penitence for misconducting themselves with his nephew.

After Woto had departed, three of his brothers went in search of him with all their subjects. Etochi, the only remaining brother, was left with his subjects in the original settlement. All this was before death made its appearance among men. The story of the origin of death we need not here consider. With it finishes what Mr. Torday considers the mythical narrative. The narrative was differently and much more shortly told by four old men of great reputa- tion. For them the human race, or at least the nation, was descended from a man and woman, born of Jambi, who lived in a hut to the north of the Sankuru near the mouth of the Kasai, therefore not several months' march away. What follows, we are assured, is "history."

Under the reign of Etochi, whose name does not occur in the Bambala legend, the Bangongo were subjected to raids by the Basongo Meno, a savage and probably cannibal tribe from the north, whom the Bangongo, a race of artizans rather than of warriors, had great difficulty in resisting. Since Etochi in this emergency refused to take counsel with his officials, they with all his subjects deserted in two bands and left him to the tender mercies of the Basongo Meno. Nyimi, his first minister, was elected king, and left his name as the title of his successors. Compare the Bambala tale of the origin of this title. Strictly