Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/492

 45 S So7ne Azotes on East African Folklore.

fishing with agriculture to a degree unusual with pure Bantu.

The Wasanye are slighter in make than the Wapokomo (who are of sturdy build, though not as a rule tall) and shorter than, e.g., the Wagiryama ; they are usually of a lightish copper colour, and most of those I saw not markedly negroid in feature. Neither could any of them be described as dwarfish in stature, or otherwise resembling the South African Bushman type, except that a woman and some children I once saw at Kipini seemed to show it in their high cheek-bones and narrow eyes.

The adoption of the Fufuriye mysteries seems to have a curious parallel in Nyasaland. I have elsewhere expressed the opinion that the so-called Angoni west of the Shire — really Anyanja, or perhaps Achewa and Achipeta — are Bantu crossed with a previous population, probably (as in the case of the Bechwana Lihoya) Bushman. I cannot help connecting the dances at the Unyago initiation cere- monies among the Anyanja — in which the performers wear masks made of the heads of animals- — with the ceremonies known to us from Bushman paintings. These 'dances, so far as I am aware — but I speak with some hesitation — are not known to the indigenous Bantu of East Africa except as practised by the Anyanja imported into the country as slaves.

Galla influence is evident from the Galla element in the Pokomo language, as well as in the fact that the Wat and one tribe of Pokomo have adopted the language of their conquerors. The Pokomo system of the hiva^ while pro- bably identical with the Rika of the Giryama, Gikuyu, etc.,

2 << Wear " is not — or not always — the correct expression to use, as I under- stand that the head is supported on a pole, the performer being hidden in a wicker framework draped with calico, roughly representing the body of the animal. See description in M. Eugene Foa's T7-aversce de PAjrique (1900), where very passable figures of elephants, etc., are shown in the illustration (p. 40), though this is clearly not reproduced from a photograph.

'•'' "$1^0. Journal of the African Society, July, 1913, p. 369.