‘But afterwards there arose a dispute as to whom the man should belong. The one who had the glass said, “He is mine, because I saw him.” The one who had the mat answered, “I flew and conveyed you.” Then answered he who had the medicine, saying, “Did I not come and make him alive?” But the one with the mat said, “Could you have brought the man to life without him who carried you there?” The sons were then about to quarrel and came to the father, bringing the man with them. And the father said, “You have all done foolishly, because you bought precious things which take away all peace; you wished to excel beyond all men, but you have failed.”’
This story, it was found on inquiry, had long been known to several of the Domasi villagers. We see that the trading voyage has become the usual journey to the coast, and the magic carpet a mat; the claiming of the man as a slave (regardless of the fact that he is previously spoken of as a friend to be mourned), is a local touch. On the Lower Congo (see Dennett, Folk-Lore of the Fjort) we find a tale which is evidently the same as this, of two wives who between them brought their husband back to life. It is found in M. Junod’s collection under the title of Les Trois Vaisseaux; we have also a Swahili version, and one from the Kru coast in West Africa. The excellent moral does not suggest the Arabian Nights; but whether it is due to some shrewd old villager who had had sad experience of squabbles over the proceeds of prosperous ‘Coast ulendos,’ or is a reflection added by Peter Mlenjesi on his own account, may be left undecided.
There is yet another kind of story, which may be dismissed very briefly, as specimens of it have occurred in another connection. It contains nothing miraculous or even very wonderful, and is usually of a more or less humorous character, turning on absurd incidents of daily life, the little failings of husbands and wives, quarrels between neighbours, and the like; and might almost be considered as a rudimentary novel or farce. ‘The Man with the Bran-Porridge’ (Yao), and ‘The Man with Two Wives’ (Nyanja), are good examples of this.
These Bantu folk-tales are sometimes contemptuously dismissed as pointless and inane; and so, perhaps, they are, in translation, for it requires great skill in the language and knowledge of native ways to translate them intelligently, even when they are fairly well told. So much has to be supplied, or explained, which, in the original, is simply taken for granted, or has to be gathered from gesture and intonation. But though their literary value may be small, they are always instructive as a picture of native manners and ideas, which they illustrate by many little graphic touches. Besides, they furnish a kind of mental training to the people themselves. I have no hesitation in introducing here a quotation from M. Junod, because, though he is speaking of the Delagoa Bay natives, it will also apply to other Bantu tribes.
‘Every young man, every girl, knows one or two tales which he or she is always willing to repeat. Sometimes, even, they are expected to amuse the company with a story, told by way of forfeit, when they are the losers in a game. Beginners often get confused and break down. They mix up the incidents, or lose the thread of the narrative. “That is too much for you!” (literally, “that has overcome you,”) says the audience, and a more skilled reciter then takes the stage. Next time, the novice will acquit himself better. Besides, when the young people have come to an end of all they know, there remain the old women, who are the real repositories of tradition. Some of them know ten, twenty, or thirty tales, and I know more than one who could go on the whole evening, every day for a fortnight, without completely exhausting her stock.... Children exercise their memory in this way, and accustom themselves to speak in public; and it is perhaps to this custom that the South African races owe their extreme facility in expressing themselves.’[29]
CHAPTER XI
TRIBAL ORGANISATION, GOVERNMENT, ETC.
Totemistic clans. Kinship counted through women. The paramount chief: his powers. Succession to the chieftainship. Administration of justice. Crime and punishment. Slavery.
Both Yaos and Anyanja trace descent through the mother, and cannot marry within their own clan, which is, of course, the mother’s. The Yao clans are still clearly known and named. Mr. R. S. Hynde says: ‘The Yaos are divided among themselves into sub-tribes, stocks, or totemistic clans,[30] each with its own distinctive name, e.g. the Amwale, the Asomba, the Apiri clan. If you question them on the subject, they will usually be able to tell you this clan name, unless the person questioned be a slave, who, from various causes, may not know it.’ Somba means ‘a fish,’ and mwale ‘a girl’; piri in Nyanja is ‘a mountain,’ though I have been unable to discover its significance as a Yao word. Thus, if Mwepeta, of the Somba clan, marries Ndiagani, of the Mwale, their children will be Mwale, and none of them can marry a Mwale. Their nearest relation and natural guardian will be their mother’s brother, who (if the grandfather is dead) will be head of the family. But his children will be no relatives of theirs, as they belong to their mother’s clan, and she (by the rule) cannot be a Mwale. Any of Mwepeta’s sons or daughters will therefore be free to marry any of these cousins; but they could not marry the children of Ndiagani’s sisters, who would be Mwale.
Some tribes of Anyanja east of the Lake have, in addition to this, a system of agnatic descent, through the father, called chilawa. This may be borrowed from the Zulus (who always count descent in this way, though the importance assigned to the maternal uncle is probably a survival of a former state of things), and the more southern tribes call it ‘the Angoni system.’ These last do not appear to have surnames; but those who recognise chilawa do; these names descend in the male line, and show at once to what family a man belongs on his father’s side. ‘Although a person’s surname is not generally known to those who are not his near relations or intimate acquaintances, because, so to speak, he does not make personal use of it, and is not called by it, yet every one knows his own surname, and is ready to give it at once, if asked for it.’ The late Bishop Maples, who put the above facts on record, was of opinion that, in spite of the close relationship existing between the sister’s son and the mother’s brother, the father is really the head of the Nyanja family, and arrived at the conclusion that a distinction must be made between ‘kin’ and ‘blood’: ‘the mother preserves to her offspring the tie of kinship, the father that of blood.’