Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/54

42 same mother; the younger ones need not be avoided; they are just called by their names, because they are younger.

Again, children are not allowed to call their mother by her name: she is only called by her husband and other people "Mabani" (mother of So and So), or Nobani, as the case may be: if they say Mabani, (if) they mention the name by which their mother is called by their father since they (the children) were born, (it would be) as though they had married their mother just as their father has married her. Also, if they say, "Nobani," it is the same thing: it is shameful that children should call their mother by her great name, just as though she were a stranger (umuntu nje="just anybody") to them.

As to the tabus observed by the husband's father, he respects his daughters-in-law in the same way, because, among the black people, if a man is not in the presence of his daughters-in-law in the midst of his own kraal, he may walk naked, wearing his umnewado only, though it be by day, not girt with his kilt, walking naked (bunqunu) in the midst of his kraal. But, if his daughters-in-law are there, there is an end of this, because he does not want to walk naked in their presence, that they may see the shame of their father-in-law. Furthermore, if the father-in-law is bathing in a river, and is seen by his daughter-in-law secretly (i.e. without his seeing her), she hides herself and goes secretly to another place; and that man, if he sees that he has been come upon by his daughter-in-law, shouts, saying, "Softly, my child! I am not fit to be seen—look the other way!" Then the woman must turn her back till her father-in-law has come out of the water and dressed himself decently, when he says, "You can go on now."

And if a daughter-in-law meets her husband's father on