Some Zulu Customs and Folk-lore

L. H. SAMUELSON
(NOMLETI)
LONDON
THE CHURCH PRINTING COMPANY
BURLEIGH STREET, STRAND, W.C.

It is hoped that the following short stories, which the writer has endeavoured to tell in the simplest language, will give some idea of the inner feelings and belief of a people whose individuality is, despite the number of years we have been in contact with them, little known to the large majority of us. Even among those well versed in the language and the practical or legal customs of the natives, there are few who are acquainted with the undercurrents of thought, and the many traditions and superstitions, which are accepted without question by the Zulus, and which form an essential part of the mental life of all among them who have not had their ideas modified to some extent by European teaching, and which continue to have a strong hold upon the larger number even of those who have had the advantages of some kind of education at the hands of the missionaries and other teachers. The common estimate of the African native is that he is a being with no ideas above his cattle and his physical wants; but a more intimate acquaintance with their life, such as the writer had from being amongst them for many years at her father’s mission station in Zululand, will reveal that the native has an ideal life of his own. This, it is true, is in many instances of a crude and savage character; yet it rises a little, if only a little, above what is “of the earth, earthly,” and, though it may possibly provoke a smile on account of its crudeness or simplicity, it will at times strike a chord of sympathy as a touch of nature—as an aspiration, however feeble, to penetrate beyond the veil which hides the unseen world from human eyes.
Those who have made the folklore of savage or half-civilized peoples their study cannot fail to be struck with the strange analogy between some of the superstitions of the Zulus and those of many other nations. Vague and undefined as some of their native ideas are, there is still a belief in the existence of a spirit world around them by which their lives are affected, and a groping after a knowledge of influences beyond human power, which direct the destinies of mortal man, and of mysterious forces which can be brought into play by men peculiarly gifted. In their custom of sacrificing to the spirits, to induce them to restore the health of a patient, and their belief in the powers of wizards, we find them under the thraldom of the same superstitions which have become familiar to us in so many and such diverse directions—from the ancient Greeks to the modern spiritualists—and which have at times played so great a part in the history of the world. Their belief in the “spirits of their fathers” watching over them is similar to the idea underlying Chinese ancestral worship, and the wizard’s powers of killing or injuring do not differ in essentials from the so-called spirit healing of enlightened America or the working of the “evil eye” still believed in by the ignorant among the peasantry of Italy. If, therefore, in reading of the Zulu superstitions we are provoked at times to smile, it must be rather at the form than at the substance. The superstitions are the same that have ever existed, and that, despite all our advancement, still find adherents among civilized communities, though among these they are expressed in more delicate language and acted upon in less savage ways. With the large mass of Europeans such superstitions, thanks to modern enlightenment, are taken at their true value; but so long as there are among ourselves people who believe in planchettes, we cannot quite afford to look with supercilious contempt upon the African who believes in wizards. And there is one point of view in which a knowledge of what he believes is of material importance. To him, these superstitions are realities. He accepts them as facts of which he has to take account, and which will be acted upon by the society in which his lot is cast. To estimate his true character, and form any accurate idea of the manner in which his mind will work, some knowledge not only of his customs but also of his social habits and beliefs is thus essential.