Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/429

Rh the long grass thousands of his fellows; he took his first glass and went away, but instead of his coming back, another just like him came for the second, and so on till the barrel was emptied and Telinga walked off with the Monkey-king's daughter. But in the narrow path the Elephant and Leopard attacked him and drove him off and he took refuge in the highest boughs of the trees, vowing never more to live on the ground and suffer such violence and injustice. This is why to this day the little telingas are only found in the highest tree-tops. Such stories have been collected by scores from savage tradition in their original state, while as yet no moral lesson has entered into them. Yet the easy and natural transition from the story into the parable is made among savages, perhaps without help from higher races. In the Hottentot Tales, side by side with the myth of the cunning Jackal tricking the Lion out of the best of the carcase, and getting the black stripe burnt on his own back by carrying off the Sun, there occurs the moral apologue of the Lion who thought himself wiser than his Mother, and perished by the Hunter's spear, for want of heed to her warning against the deadly creature whose head is in a line with his breast and shoulders. So the Zulus have a thorough moral apologue in the story of the hyrax, who did not go to fetch his tail on the day when tails were given out, because he did not like to be out in the rain; he only asked the other animals to bring it for him, and so he never got it. Among the North American legends of Manabozho, there is a fable quite Æsopian in its humour. Manabozho, transformed into a Wolf, killed a fat moose, and being very hungry sat down to eat. But he fell into great doubts as to where to begin, for, said he, if I begin at the head, people will laugh and say, he ate him backwards,