[5] J.C. Christaller, in Büttner's Zeitschr. für Afr. Sprachen. M. Réné Basset says of a similar story included in Col. Monteil's Contes Soudanais: "L'Enfant et le caïman est le sujet bien connu de l'ingratitude punie que l'on retrouve dans tous les pays de l'ancien monde, et dont M. Kenneth Mackenzie vient d'étudier les diverses variantes." The idea is one so likely to occur independently that we must not in all cases resort to the hypothesis of borrowing.
[6] Duff Macdonald, Africana, ii. 346.
[7] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast.
[8] No. 16 in the Handbook of Folklore (p. 122). It might also be referred to the "Golden Goose" type (51). Stories of this kind are the Ronga "Route du Ciel," and "The Three Women" in Duff Macdonald's Africana. But perhaps the tale referred to in the text comes nearer to "The Two Hunchbacks."
[9] In Mr. Dudley Kidd's Savage Childhood (published since the above was written), I find that Zulu (or Pondo?) boys draw certain omens from spiders, in connection with dreams (p. 105), and that in Gazaland the rainbow is called "the spider's bow" (p. 153).
[10] Magana Hausa, 63.
[11] See Ursprung der Sprache (Weimar, 1868), pp. xix, xxiii (Introduction).
[12] McCall Theal, Kaffir Folk-Tales, pp. 96-98.
[13] "Afrikanische Studien," 1898 (Transactions of the Berlin Oriental Seminary, vol. i.) p. 194.
[14] He had been brought to Europe by a German naval officer in 1885, and remained for some time an inmate of Professor Meinhof's family.