The remaining thirty tales were given me at Batanga; by three adult narrators, all of them civilized men. They spoke them with me alone, or in the presence of one or two silent attendants, sentence by sentence, in their Bapuku dialect of the Benga language. I rapidly made notes in an English translation of their principal words. This was always at night, in order to leave the narrator at that ease which he would naturally feel if he was telling the story to an audience in the street, as he is accustomed to do in the evenings. For that purpose also, I shaded my lamp, using its light only for my pencil; he therefore spoke unrestrainedly. Next morning, with my memory still fresh of the night’s story, I filled out the sentences. This set of the tales therefore is more native, in the preservation of its idioms, than any other part.
TALE 1
Swine Talking
Persons
Ingowa (Hogs)
NOTE
Unlike other native legends based on “they say,” the native narrator, now more than 40 years ago, gave the name and family name of the man who is stated to have reported that he heard Swine talking with human speech.
There was a certain man in the time long ago, by name Bokona, whose family name was Bodikito. He went to the depths of the forest to do some business. When he was about to return in the afternoon to go to his village, he heard in advance of him, a noise of conversation. He thought that perhaps they were people (of whose presence he was not aware; for, there were no villages in that part of the forest). But, when he had approached the spot, he did not see people; but only a herd of Hogs speaking with the voices of people. He was thus perfectly sure that they speak the language of Mankind.