Page:Folklore1919.djvu/38

26 In neither of these last two versions are we told that the messenger was actually sent by the Moon. In one Hottentot version the Moon sent an insect with the message of immortality, but a hare took on itself to reverse the message which it had extracted from the insect. The Tati "Bushmen" or Masarwa, who are a mixed folk, narrate that the Moon sent two messengers of immortality, a tortoise and a hare; as the former was very slow, the hare was despatched, but forgetting the message on the way she reversed it.

The ALouyi, of the Upper Zambezi, say that the Sun-god and Moon-goddess sent the chameleon with a message of immortality and the hare with one of death, with the usual ending. This version, which brings in both Sun and Moon, forms a connecting link between the two forms of the story.

(2) In the widely-spread southern Bantu tale (BeChuana, BaSuto, BaRonga, Zulu and allied ANgoni) the message of immortality from the vacillating deity was first sent by the slow chameleon, but the rapid lizard arrived sooner with a revised message of death. Another Bantu people, the AKamba of British East Africa, say that God sent a chameleon and a thrush with the same message of immortality, but the thrush perverted it.

It is now generally admitted that the forebears of the Hottentots, who were then practically Bushmen, in early days must have been in close contact with a Hamitic people far north in East Africa, from whom they obtained the structure of their language and their cattle. The diffusion of the tale to some Bushmen presents no difficulty. It is recognised that there is a Hamitic strain and traces of Hamitic culture among Bantu-speaking peoples, especially among the eastern and southern tribes. The Nandi are Hamitised Nilotic Negroes. Therefore this tale extends from South Africa right up to the Hamitic portion of eastern Africa.

In the west of Africa we find that on the Gold Coast and