Fairy Tales From South Africa
Sarah F. Bourhill & Beatrice L. Drake
9781465536006
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
All the stories in this book are real Fairy Tales, just as much as “Jack the Giant-Killer” or “The Sleeping Beauty.” By this I mean that they are traditional, handed down by word of mouth. Nobody knows how old they are, or who told them first. But little Kafir children sit round the fire at night and hear them from their old grandmother, and sometimes—but very very seldom—white people are allowed to hear them too. You see, the Kafirs are afraid white people would laugh at them, and so they will only begin if they are quite sure you are really interested. Even then they never like to tell the tales by daylight, for they say that if they do so a wicked spirit will cause a horn to grow out of the middle of their forehead, and they will become as ugly as an Imbula. Sometimes they can be persuaded, but then they always take a piece of grass and place it in their hair to ward off evil lest they be bewitched. But the best time to hear the tales is in the evening when all the work is done. Then a huge fire is made, and when all the children have played till they are tired, and sung and danced till they can remember no more songs to sing, they gather in a circle and lie upon the ground where they can best see the story-teller. And if the Kafir people were quite sure you would be interested and wouldn’t laugh, they would give you the best seat of all and let you hear the finest tales. All the Kafir children know the tales as we know ours, but not all can tell them well. When many people are there the best story-teller will be asked to come forward. Most often it is a woman with children and grandchildren of her own, whom everybody knows well. She sits in the firelight, and begins quite quietly. But soon she gets excited, and before long she acts the whole story before you. She does it so well that if I were to tell you just the name of the story you could follow it without knowing a word of the language. One favourite tale is that which we have called “The Beauty and the Beast,” and there are ever so many different versions of this story. Other well-known ones are “Nya-nya Bulembu,” “The Fairy Frog,” and “The Fairy Bird.” The little black children all open their eyes with horror when the monster appears, and you cannot think how glad they are to remember there are no ogres nowadays who have long red hair and kill and eat little girls. I don’t think such people ever really existed anywhere, not even in Kafir-land. They are just like our fairies and ogres; nobody knows who first thought of them. But there used to be many bad Kings, like Semai-mai, who made their subjects unhappy, and much fighting took place in former days. For all these stories come from the olden times, when there were no white settlers in the country, and when the Kafirs lived alone and followed their own customs. They did not have one great King over all, but were broken up into tribes, and each tribe had its Chief, who was sometimes called its King. That is why there are so many Kings and Princes and Princesses in the tales. They were much commoner then than in our days. These tribes often fought against one another. The great aim of every Chief was to have plenty of men to do his bidding, and plenty of cattle in his kraal; and if his neighbour were better off, he often tried to steal from him. You will notice that the Princes in these tales did not think of conquering new lands to occupy, as we should, but they all wanted men to fight for them. It seems as if, in South Africa, there was always plenty of land, but never enough men and women to occupy it. There was no money then, but a man’s riches were counted by the number of his cattle and his wives. In peaceful times the Kafir men do very little except look after the cattle. This the women have nothing to do with; they must not so much as touch the bowls in which milk has been placed. In the old times fighting was very frequent, so that a Kafir Chief was not so lazy as many people seem to think.
