Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/149



first of the tales given here is one which with slight variants is told by Hottentots wherever they live in South Africa. It was taken down in the corrupt Dutch used by those people and translated into English by the late Mr. Thomas Bain, and was first published in the Folklore Journal of July 1879. The second is taken from the late Dr. Bleek's Reynard the Fox in South Africa or Hottentot Fables and Tales, published in London in 1864. It was taken down by the reverend G. Krönlein, Rhenish missionary in Great Namaqualand, from narrators in the Nama dialect, and was presented by him to the Grey Library in Capetown, where it was translated into English by Dr. Bleek. The third and fourth were collected with many others by myself from people of the Xosa tribe between 1860 and 1879. The Xosas are of mixed Bantu and Hottentot descent, and the Hottentot women who during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were forced to become the consorts of Bantu men must have introduced these stories, for they are not current among pure Bantu elsewhere. They have a very slight Bantu colouring but not more than sufficient to bring them into line with Xosa comprehension. The fifth is one of several taken down in Dutch by Captain Alexander in Little Namaqualand, and translated by him into English. The others are English translations by Dr. Bleek from Namaqua stories collected by the reverend Mr. Krönlein.

There was a great drought in the land, and the lion called together a number of animals, that they might devise a plan for retaining water when the rains fell. The animals which attended