Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/365

 n s. iv. OCT. 28, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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which he had to occupy. Like the Australian black and the Eskimo, he filled his place in the natural order of things exactly.

Childlike as he is said to have been in all matters not connected with immediate bodily wants, he had a skill and cunning in gaining the necessities of life which could not well be surpassed. In fair- ness, too, it ought to be allowed that he could at times show, himself to be a mature human being in his social affections. Some capacity for self- sacrifice did exist in the race. This is proved by a narrative among the personal histories given at the end of the folk-lore proper. One of the few surviving members of the expiring nation, who had brought up a dead brother's daughter, relates : " For her father died, leaving her. I was the one who Went (and) fetched her, when her mother had just died. . . .1 went to fetch her . . . .while I felt that I was still a young man, and I was fleet in running to shoot. . . .She (would) eat with my (own) child, which was still (an only) one. And then they would both grow, going out from me (to play near the hut) ; because they both ate my game (' shot things ')." The feeling embodied in these words cannot reasonably be considered infantile, however childlike the speaker may have been in most respects.

Again, ' The Story of the Young Man of the Ancient Race, who was carried off by a Lion when asleep in the Field,' contains the elements of tragedy as it is felt by mature minds. After he had escaped for a time, " the people at home " made in their savage way great sacrifices to save him, " while they felt that their heart's young man he was." When" the lion would not die, although the people were shooting at it," they went so far as to throw children to the animal, and subsequently offered it a girl, though in vain, for the lion wanted only " the young man whose tears it had licked." In such straits the people, speaking, said : ' Say ye to the young man's mother about it, that she must, although she loves the young man, she must take out the young man, she must give the young man to the lion, even if he be the child of her heart. For she is the one who sees that the sun is about to set, while the lion is threatening us ; the lion will not go (and) leave us ; for it insists upon (having) the young man.' And the young man's mother spoke, she said : 'Ye may give my child to the lion ; ye shall not allow the lion to eat my child ;. . . .for ye shall killing lay it upon my child ; that it may die, like my child ; that it may die lying upon my child.' .... And the lion spoke ; it said to the people about it, that this time was the one at which it would die ; for it had got hold of the man for whom it had been seeking ; it had got hold of him ! And it died, while the man also lay dead ; it also lay dead with the man." Here, irrational as the plot of the legend may be, and simple as the language is, the mental suffering suggested is that of men and women.

It is interesting to observe that in a few in- stances Bushman belief has developed along the lines followed by European folk-lore. In one myth the wind is represented as dwelling in a " mountain's hole," as the four winds in Hans Andersen's story, and in other legends, live in a cave. The bull in which rain becomes incarnate " he resembled a bull, while he felt that (he) was the Rain's body " has his home in a water pit, and the pit becomes dry when it feels that the

Rain has gone out. This conception is not far from that of the water-bull of Scotch streams and lochs.

The South African pygmy, who has many myths about the heavenly bodies, also agrees with the white race in showing deference to the new moon. The Englishwoman who clings to traditional custom still curtsies to it. Probably she continues- to invoke it in love-affairs. The dwarfs of the South pray to it also in their own fashion. Again, the Englishwoman feels that ill-luck will follow if she sees the new moon through glass, even through her spectacles ; and, like her husband,, she is convinced that pigs must be slaughtered when the moon is waxing, otherwise the flesh will waste and diminish when cooked. On their- part the Bushmen are told by their mothers that " the moon is not a good person if we look at him," one reason being that, " if we had looked at him,, the game which we had shot would go along also- like the moon." The stars appear to be connected! with hunting, too, but in a different manner : " They cursed for the people the springboks' eyes." Canopus could be invoked that he might " lend his arm " to a hunter who missed his aiuii when shooting arrows at a springbok.

BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES. OCTOBER.

CATALOGUE 278 of Mr. J. G. Commin of Exeter is naturally strong in Devonshire items. Among these we may mention a collection of 27 Broad- sides and Ballads, including ' The Lamentation of Rebecca Downing,' condemned to be burnt in 1782 for poisoning her master, 27. 10s. ; ' Epis- copal Registers of the Diocese of Exeter,' edited by Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph, 9 vols.,. 4Z. ; Brice's Weekly Journal, 1729-31, 21. 2s. (on the death of the proprietor his body lay in state at an inn, every person who came to see it paying a shilling to defray the cost of the funeral) ; and Thomas Risdon's ' The Decimes ; or, A Coro- graphicall Description of the County of Devon," a seventeenth-century manuscript of 280 pages, from the library of our old contributor Dr.. Brushfield. Among the general entries are J. Richardson's ' Fauna Boreali- Americana,' with upwards of 150 engravings, 4 vols. in 3, 182937, 51. 10s. ; Payne Collier's manuscript collections for a Life of the great Earl of Essex, 31. 10s. ; Strutt's ' Dress and Habits of the People of England,' with 143 plates in colour, 2 vols., 1796-9, 31. 15*. ; Baret's ' Alvearie,' 1580, 4L 10s. r and two black- letter volumes Thomas Raynald's ' The Birth of Man-Kinde, otherwise named the Woman's Booke,' curious cuts, in contemporary vellum, 1634, 31. 10s. ; and Wigon's ' Most Excellent Worckes of Chirurgery,' " Imprynted by EdWarde Whytchurch," 1550, 4Z. 10s. There are lists under Dickensiana, Folk-lore, London, and Pamphlets.

The Remainder Catalogue (No. 380) of Mr. Wm. Glaisher contains some interesting books at moderate prices, including H. L. Adam's- ' Oriental Crime,' full of picturesque and enter- taining details ; one of Mr. William Andrews's- chatty books, ' At the Sign of the Barber's Pole ' ; R. H. Case's ' English Epithalamies,' a com- prehensive collection of the nuptial songs of the Elizabethans ; Craig's ' Life of Lord Chester- field ' ; Allan Fea's ' James II. and his Wives,' entertaining records of this Stuart king ; Frank