XXXII. is unimportant.
In XXXIII. we find the ordeal poison, which destroys fifty witches.
XXXIV. The Slave Girl who tried to Kill her Mistress is a form of our common tale of the waiting-maid who usurps the place of her mistress, the Bride. The resurrection of the Bride from the water, at the cry of her little sister, occurs in a remote quarter, among the Samoyeds in Castren's Samoyedische Märchen, but there the opening is in the style of Asterinos and Pulja (Phrixus and Helle) in Van Hahn's Griechische Märchen. The False Bride story is, in an ancient French chanson de geste, part of the legend of the mother of Charlemagne. The story also occurs in Callaway's collection of Zulu fairy tales. In the Nigerian version the manners, customs, and cruelties are all thoroughly West African.
XXXV. The King and the 'Nsiat Bird accounts, as usual, for the habits of the bird; and also illustrates the widespread custom of killing twins.
XXXVI. reflects the well-known practices of poison and the ordeal by poison.
XXXVII. is another "Just So Story."
XXXVIII. The Drummer and the Alligators.—In this grim tale of one of the abominable secret societies the human alligators appear to be regarded as being capable of taking bestial form, like werewolves or the leopards of another African secret society.
XXXIX. and XL. are both picturesque "Just So Stories," so common in the folk-lore of all countries.
The most striking point in the tales is the combination of good humour and good feeling with horrible cruelties, and the reign of terror of the Egbos and lesser societies. European influences can scarcely do much harm, apart from whisky, in Nigeria. As to religion, we do not learn that the Creator receives any sacrifice: in savage and barbaric countries He usually gets none. Only Ju Jus, whether ghosts or fiends in general, are propitiated. The Other is "too high and too far."
I have briefly indicated the stories which have variants in ancient myth and European Märchen or fairy tales.