Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/145

Rh daughter was highly respected; to her was entirely left the milking of the cows. This was in accordance with the respect shown to the female sex in general. There is a nice charming little song illustrating this:


 * “My lioness!
 * Art thou afraid that I will bewitch thee?
 * Thou milkest the cow with a fleshy hand (i.e. with a soft hand).
 * Bite me! (i.e. kiss me!)
 * Pour for me (milk)!
 * My lioness,
 * Great man's daughter.

“The uncle always calls his niece, the brother's or sister's daughter, ‘my lioness.’

“The highest oath a man could take, and still takes, was to swear by his eldest sister. A man can never address his own sister personally; he must speak to another person to address the sister in his name, or in the absence of anybody he says so that his sister can hear, ‘I wish that somebody will tell my sister that I wish to have a drink of milk,’ &c. The eldest sister can even inflict punishment on a grown-up brother if he omits the established traditionary rules of courtesy and the code of etiquette.”

Among some—not all—of the Hottentot clans there was a custom which, though described by many early observers, was regarded by most writers of the nineteenth century without sufficient investigation as so utterly incredible that they did not notice it. Yet it is practised at the present day by people who are certainly not of Hottentot blood, but who must have derived their language as well as many of their customs from Hottentot conquerors in bygone times. It stands to them in the same relation that circumcision does to many Bantu clans, that is, among them a youth cannot enter the society of men or take to himself a wife until he has been made a monorch (μόνορχις). A custom so extraordinary shows what force habit and superstition have among barbarians.

With all their degrading habits, the Hottentots possessed large powers of imagination. They speculated upon objects