Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/341

 ii s. iv. OCT. 21, i9iL] NOTES AND QUERIES.

335

FULANI OB FULAHS, A NlGEBIAN RACE

(US. iv. 270). There is no ground for sup- posing that the Fulani or Fulahs, as they are generally called by English writers came from Egypt. They are spread over a large area of the western and central Sudan, and are regarded as a race rather than a tribe. Prof. A. H. Keane writes of them in ' Africa,' Vol. I., 1895, in ' Stan- ford's Compendium of Geography and Travel ' :

" The Fulahs are originally Hamites, probably to be identified with the Leuksethiopi (' White Ethiopians '), placed by Pliny south of the Mauretanian Gsetulians, on the confines of the Black Zone. They may be regarded as the pioneers of the northern peoples for ages pressing southwards in the direction of Sudan, which region they reached at such a remote epoch that they have lost all memory of their primitive Hamitic speech, and now speak a language of distinctly Negro type."

Their name (singular Palo, plural Fulbe), which appears to have the general meaning of light or fair or red, in contradistinction to the more or less black colour of the Sudanese aborigines, has assumed a great variety of forms amongst the surrounding populations. Thus they are called Fula by the Mandingoes ; Fulaji or Fellani by the Hausa ; Fulata or Fellata by the Kanuri ; Fullan by the Arabs ; Afut or Ifulan by the Southern Tuaregs ; Afellen or Ifellenen by the North- ern Tuaregs, Peul or Poul by French travel- lers, besides other more or less doubtful forms.

R. N. Gust in his ' Modern Languages of Africa,' Triibner & Co., 1883, gives a list of about a score of books dealing with them and their language. Further information may be found in the following works :

Hodgson, William B. The Foulahs of Central Africa, and the African Slave-Trade. New York, 1843. 8vo. And his Notes on Northern Africa, New York, 1844, 8vo.

Lauture, Count d'Escayrac de. M4moire sur le Soudan : G6ographie Naturelle et Politique, Histoire et Ethnographic, Mceurs et Institutions de 1'Empire des Fellatas, &c., Paris, 1855-6. Svo.

Crozals, J. de. Les Peulhs. Paris, 1883. Svo.

Monteil, Lieut.-Col. P. L. De Saint Louis a Tripoli par le Lac Tchad. Paris, 1895.

Robinson, C. H. Hausaland. 1896.

Mockler-Ferryman, Major A. F. British West Africa. London, the Imperial Press, Limited, 1898. Svo.

Tremearne, Capt. A. J. N. The Niger and the West Sudan. London, 1910.

Annales de Geographic, IV. 1894-5, pp. 346-68. Les Boyaumes Foulb6 du Soudan Central, by Lieut. L. Mizon.

Le Mouvement Geographique, 1896, p. 311.

Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, 1840, iv. pp. 136- 140 ; 1842, iii. p. 350.

Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Geo- graphical Society ; and The Geographical Joumal t passim.

All these works are in the library of the Royal Geographical Society, 1, Savile Row, W. The list does not pretend to be exhaus- tive, for many other travellers and writers, French especially, deal with the Fulahs and their relations with the various peoples among whom they have settled. They are an interesting race, and a monograph, with a full bibliography, would not be unwelcome. FBEDK. A. EDWARDS, F.R.G.S.

The late Lieut. Boyd Alexander, in his book ' From the Niger to the Nile,' vol. i; p. 190, speaking of the Fulani, says that they are an Eastern people who settled in Egypt, having come from further east still. They are supposed to have been driven from Egypt during the Theban dynasty 2,500 years ago. They own large herds of horses, cattle, and sheep. In their march west- ward they have kept to the fertile plains, avoiding the desert. The "Cow" or " Bush " Fulani are thought to be the purest stock.

Other authorities think that Darfur was their primitive home, and that from there they migrated west and south. For fur- ther information about these interesting people, see Lady Lugard's ' A Tropical Dependency.' A. LEWIS.

" BOMBAY DUCK " (11 S. iv. 187, 238). There can be little doubt, I think, that the Rev. James Cordiner's supposition (see 10 S. xii. 5) that this expression arose among sailors is right ; my recollections of my father, the late Mr. Norman Hill, indeed, go far towards confirming it. He had been an oat for some thirty years in the waters of India, China, and Japan till the vessel he commanded, the s.s. Ly-ee-moon, was pur- chased in 1863, on account of her speed, for the Mikado as the imperial yacht. Consequently he had formed a very natural predilection for Oriental dishes. I remember well that when we had a curry for dinner, he always took a piece of bummelo along with it ; and on these occasions he used to speak of the relish indifferently as " Bom- bay duck " or " dungaree duck." Now " dungaree " is a coarse calico of Indian manufacture, and " duck " is the name of a similar material used formerly in the making of sailors' clothes, and applied at a later date to trousers made from it. Sailors in the East, being regaled with the dried bummelo fish together with rice, humorously dubbed