Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/142

118 Whilst he was yet speaking, hair began to appear at the back of the woman's neck, her nails began to assume the appearance of claws, and her features altered. She sat down the child.

The man, alarmed at the change, climbed a tree close by, the woman glared at him fearfully, and going to one side she threw off her skin petticoat, when a perfect lion rushed out into the plain; it bounded and crept among the bushes towards the wild horses, and springing on one of them it fell, and the lion lapped its blood. The lion then came back to where the child was crying, and the man called from the tree, “enough! enough! don't hurt me. Put off your lion's shape. I'll never ask to see this again.”

The lion looked at him and growled. “I'll remain here till I die,” said the man, “if you don't become a woman again.” The mane and tail then began to disappear, the lion went towards the bush where the skin petticoat lay; it was slipped on, and the woman in her proper shape took up the child. The man descended, partook of the horse's flesh, but never again asked the woman to catch game for him.

It has been said that the women had to do the hardest of the work and were punished if they declined to perform it, but they occupied that position as a matter of course, and would have despised a man who intruded upon their domain. They did not interfere with him in his use of the assagai, the bow, or the club, they left the chase entirely to him, and so they would have regarded it as improper if he had set about making mats or digging bulbs from the ground. In real fact they—excepting of course such captives as have been described—were more nearly the equals of the men, and were permitted to exercise much greater freedom of speech in domestic disputes, than among most barbarians. They were mistresses within the huts. The stores of milk were under their control, not under that of their husbands, as was the case with the Bantu. The men or their sons tended the cattle, but their daughters milked the cows.