Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/50

38 wife's brother's wife, while the Baila include all the wife's relations as tabu to the husband, and vice versa.

The following is a translation, as literal as possible, of the Zulu text referred to on p. 28:

(As to) the matter of hlonipa among the black people: A man begets sons—now those sons are not able to utter the name of their father, because they were begotten of him. The name of their father is a great thing to his children; it is not merely a name, it is their father's very self; but they mention it if they are asked by a man who does not know them, saying, "Whose sons are you?" So they say, "We are the sons of So and So." It is not said that it is to be avoided, if the children are asked the name of their father: there is no disgrace in that; it is good that they should mention the name of their father, if they are asked, and it is wanted (to know who they are) that they may be known, where their father is known.

Because the name of their father will prepare for them a good place, so that, there where the children are not known, they may be known by means of their father and eat well, sleep well and travel well. But it is not permitted that a child should lightly bandy about the name of his father, as he might that of any one else; and they (i.e. other people) are not permitted to use it carelessly when they are discussing matters with him; they say, "So and So " (Bani) when they refer to him. But sons, when they address their father say, "Father" (Baba) even if they are grown up; they have not been released by their growing-up from treating their father's name with respect, as if they should say, "Since we are now grown up, we can call our father just like (any other) man who is not our father, we should incur no blame." But it is not so: [on the contrary], it is