Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/95

Rh of a Bushman named Qing, who lived in the Maluti mountains. It was published by Mr. Orpen, with other tales and descriptive matter, in the Cape Monthly Magazine for July 1874, under the title of A Glimpse into the Mythology of the Maluti Bushmen. Mr. Orpen does not use the usual signs for the clicks in the Bushman words, but the letters which in the Xosa dialect are employed to represent three of them.

“Cagn sent Cogaz (his eldest son) to cut sticks to make bows. When Cogaz came to the bush, the baboons (co'gn) caught him. They called all the other baboons together to hear him, and they asked him who sent him there. He said his father sent him to cut sticks to make bows. So they said, ‘your father thinks himself more clever than we are; he wants those bows to kill us, so we'll kill you,’ and they killed Cogaz, and tied him up in the top of a tree, and they danced round the tree, singing (an intranscribable baboon song), with a chorus saying ‘Cagn thinks he is clever.’ Cagn was asleep when Cogaz was killed, but when he awoke he told Coti (his wife) to give him his charms, and he put some on his nose, and said the baboons have hung Cogaz. So he went to where the baboons were, and when they saw him coming close by, they changed their song so as to omit the words about Cagn, but a little baboon girl said, ‘don't sing that way, sing the way you were singing before.’ And Cagn said, ‘sing as the little girl wishes,’ and they sang and danced away as before. And Cagn said, ‘that is the song I heard, that is what I wanted, go on dancing till I return;’ and he went and fetched a basket full of pegs, and he went behind each of them as they were dancing and making a great dust, and he drove a peg into each one's back, and gave it a crack, and sent them off to the mountains to live on roots, beetles, and scorpions, as a punishment. Before that baboons were men, but since that they have tails, and their tails hang crooked. Then Cagn took Cogaz down, and gave him canna, and made him live again.”

The following story is taken from the volume Bushman Folklore by Drs. Bleek and Lloyd. Absurd as it may seem to European readers, the narrator believed that the events recorded were actual facts.