M. Du Chaillu, in his "Journey to Ashango-land," relates a singular legend, believed in by the natives of Aviia, respecting a series of rapids and a singularly picturesque waterfall which he discovered on the river Ngouyai, and which bears some resemblance to the popular legend about Wayland Smith and to those already referred to. He says:—"Like all other remarkable natural objects, the falls of the Ngouyai, have given rise, in the fertile imaginations of the negroes, to mythical stories. The legend runs that the main falls are the work of the spirit Fougamou, who resides there, and who was in old times a mighty forger of iron; but the rapids above are presided over by Nagoshi, the wife of Samba, who has spoiled this part of the river in order to prevent people from ascending and descending. The falls to which the name Samba is given lie a good day's journey below the Fougamou, but, from the description of the natives, I concluded they were only rapids like the Nagoshi above. The Fougamou is the only great fall of water. It takes its name from the spirit (mbuiri) who is said to have made it, and who watches it constantly, wandering night and day round the falls. A legend on this subject was related to us with great animation by our Aviia guide, to the following effect: In former times people used to go to the falls, deposit iron and charcoal on the river side and say, 'Oh! mighty Fougamou, I want this iron to be worked into a knife or hatchet,' (or whatever implement it might be), and, in the morning, when they went to the place, they found the weapon finished. One day, however, a man and his son went with their iron and charcoal, and had the impertinent curiosity to wait and see how it was done. They hid themselves,—the father, in the hollow of a tree, and the son, amongst the boughs of another tree. Fougamou came with his son and began to work, when suddenly the son said, 'Father, I smell the smell of people!' The father replied, 'Of course you smell people, for does not the iron and charcoal come from the hands of people?' So they worked on. But the son again interrupted his father, repeating the same words, and then Fougamou looked round and saw the two men. He roared with rage, and, to punish the father and son, he turned the tree in which the father was hidden into an ant-hill, and the hiding place of the son into a nest of black ants. Since then Fougamou has not worked iron for the people any more."

In another place, Du Chaillu says,—"I was much amused by the story one of the men related about the dry and wet seasons. The remarkable dryness of the present season had been talked over a good deal, and it was this conversation which led to the story. As usual with the African, the two seasons were personified, Nchanga, being the name of the wet, and Enomo that of the dry season. One day, the story went, Nchanga and Enomo had a great dispute as to which was the older, and they came at last to lay a wager on the question, which was to be decided in an assembly of the people of the air or sky. Nchanga said, 'When I come to a place rain comes.' Enomo retorted, 'When I make my appearance the rains goes.' The people of the air all listened, and, when the two disputants had ceased, they exclaimed, 'Verily, verily, we cannot tell which is the eldest, you must be both of the same age.'"

CHAPTER XV.

CONCLUSION.

More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact;
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt;
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination:
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or, in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear.

Shakspere.

In the preceding chapters the chief object I have had in view has been to show that many superstitions and legends yet, or recently, familiar to the people of our northern counties, were, like their congeners in other portions of Europe, descendants from one common parentage. I have dealt almost entirely with that species of folk-lore which I think has been originally communicated orally from one generation to another, and not so much with that which may be termed the literary fictions of Europe and the East, except in so far as there is good reason to know that the latter are built upon the former. Still Oriental scholars assure us that "many of our best European fictions, as well single stories as whole collections, may be traced from Europe to Arabia, and from Arabia to India, and that the Indian form of the story or collection almost invariably bears the marks of an earlier origin than any other form, and appears to be, if not the original form, at least the oldest surviving one."[36]

Doubtless many other traditionary observances, now nearly obsolete, might be traced to a similar origin to that which I have ascribed to those treated of in this work. Sufficient, however, I believe, has been done to demonstrate the fact that many of them are of much greater antiquity than has generally been supposed. A national religion may be changed in a relatively short period of time, but superstition and tradition, in some form or other, hold their own amongst the populace for ages after their original significance has perished.[37] Hallam, referring to the religious condition of the Britons at the time of the heptarchy, says "the retention of heathen superstitions was not incompatible, in that age, with a cordial faith" in Christianity.