Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/346

338 that one marvels at so much ingenuity in a land that has no literature, nor even a written language. Of such legends the original form is lost, and can only be recovered by means of comparison with those of inner Africa, of which many are substantially identical with those of the South.

I am not able to give many legends, absolutely new, in the words of the natives themselves, for the reason stated, but the substance of the few that can be embodied in the compass of a single article I have heard confirmed in a variety of ways, chiefly by reference and allusion, in speaking of other matters, and thus showing familiarity with what the story-tellers relate with all the embellishments which their art can suggest.

The manner in which the tribes we term Bantu, for want of a more descriptive name, became divided into so many independent septs, and at the same time absorbed the peoples they conquered, with hardly a trace of their nationality remaining, is clearly shown by their law of succession. Whole tribes of Hottentots have been absorbed, and not a trace of their identity remains, except place names, and a few words of doubtful meaning. In one case only, that of the Gqunaqua tribe, did the Hottentot customs and language survive. There, too, the personal characteristics of the conquered persisted for generations, and only within the last hundred years have they gradually reverted to type, and become once more thoroughly Bantu.

To begin with the law of inheritance. A chiefs wives have each their own rank and station assigned to them by law and custom. Frequently the youngest is the chief wife, and for this reason: as a man advances in life his influence and power grow, and he can then make more favourable alliances than at an earlier period when his chances are doubtful; and so it happens that an old chief of sixty often marries the daughter of a powerful neighbour, and promotes her to the position of chief wife, whose son is his heir. Of the others, one is what