If we add to this his power of living for a long time without food, his silence, the extreme slowness and caution of his movements, his instinct of keeping out of sight, and the peculiar air of dogged determination with which he sets about overcoming or circumventing obstacles, it is "easy to understand how in process of time the word which stood for tortoise became a synonym for cunning and craft, and a man of exceptional intelligence was in this way known among the Ibo as 'Mbai,' and among the Ibani as 'Ekake,' meaning a tortoise. For although he of the shell-back was slow, he was sure, as the old Greek Aesop tells us.... This sureness, in the native mind, implied doggedness and a fixed determination, while silence and secrecy implied mystery and a veiled purpose behind which it is impossible to get."
The tortoise of African folk-lore is sometimes, in fact usually, the land-tortoise (as implied in the above extracts), of which there are several species, living either in forest-country or in deserts like the Kalahari. In Angola, the story of "Man and Turtle" (Chatelain, p. 153—identical with "Mr. Fox tackles Old Man Tarrypin" in "Uncle Remus") refers to a kind which, if not aquatic, is evidently amphibious. We find tortoise stories all over Negro and Bantu Africa; we have Temne, Bullom, and Yoruba examples, besides Duala, Konde (Nyasa), Yao, Nyanja, Herero, Bemba, Congo (Upoto), Angola and Sesuto ones. This does not exhaust the list I have made out, and further research would no doubt bring to light many more. One of these is the well-known "tug-of-war" story, which in "Uncle Remus" has the title "Mr. Terrapin shows his strength." We have two versions of this (agreeing in their main points) from the Kamerun, one told by the Duala, the other by the Yabakalaki-Bakoko tribe. Here it is the Elephant and the Hippopotamus whom the Tortoise induces to pull against each other. The American Negro substitutes the Bear for one of these competitors, and then, apparently at a loss for a wild animal strong enough to take the place of the other, makes "Brer Tarrypin" tie "Miss Meadows's bed-cord" to a root in the bed of the stream. But it is interesting to find two native African versions in which other animals are substituted for the Tortoise. The Temne (Cunnie Rabbit, p. 117) gives his part to the Spider, while the Bemba people (North-eastern Rhodesia) make the Hare the hero of the adventure. Col. Monteil gives a Mandingo variant, introducing a different motive for the contest: the Hare has borrowed a slave apiece from the Elephant and the Hippopotamus, and when pressed for payment hands each of his competitors in turn the end of a rope, with the words, "Tu n'as qu'à tirer sur cette corde, le captif est au bout."[16]
Another Temne story collected by Miss Cronise, "Mr. Turtle makes a riding-horse of Mr. Leopard," is paralleled by an Angola one (Chatelain, p. 203) in which it is Mr. Frog who plays the trick on Mr. Elephant. In the New World, it will be remembered that Brer Rabbit has usurped the part.
In M. René Basset's Anthology of African Folk-tales[17] is included a tale about a monkey and a tortoise from Baissac's Folklore de l'Ile Maurice which recalls a Nyanja one obtained by me at Blantyre and printed in the Contemporary Review for September, 1896. In the latter it is the iguana, not the monkey who robs the Tortoise; but in both, the Tortoise exacts retribution with a cold-blooded relentlessness suggestive of Shylock. A Brazilian negro story is also given, which looks like a variant of one told in Calabar to account for the fact that the Tortoise's shell is composed of separate plates, as though it had been broken to pieces and put together again.
But we look in vain for the tortoise in these stories of Mr. Jekyll's. Even in the race-story, as we have seen, the part which in Africa is so peculiarly his own, is taken by the Toad. Probably this is because the land-tortoise is not found in Jamaica, and the great turtle of the seas is not a creature whose ways would come under the daily observation of the peasantry. In the same way familiar animals have been substituted for unfamiliar ones in a great many cases, though not in all. Mr. Jekyll thinks "Tiger" is a substitute for "Lion," but it seems equally possible that "Leopard" is meant. All over South Africa, leopards are called "tigers" by Dutch, English, and Germans, just as hyenas are called "wolves," and bustards "peacocks" (paauw). "Tiger" is used in the same sense in German Kamerun, and probably elsewhere in West Africa. Lion and elephant are known—perhaps by genuine tradition—to Uncle Remus; but they seem to have faded from the recollection of the Jamaica negroes; indeed, the lion is not found in their original homes, being absent from the whole West Coast as far as Sierra Leone.
"Brer Rabbit," so characteristic a figure of Bantu folk-lore that his adventures are related from one side of Africa to the other (though in the west he is less frequently met with north of Angola), only appears in two of Mr. Jekyll's stories, in none of which we can recognize anything of his traditional character. In "[Annancy and his Fish-pot]," he is unscrupulously victimised by Annancy, and subsequently dies of fright and worry; in "[Snake the Postman]," he escapes from Annancy's machinations, but there is no indication that he could ever be considered a match for "that cravin' fellah." In "[John Crow and Fowl-hawk]" he is merely alluded to ([p. 142], "This company was Rabbit"). In "[Dry Bone]," he is induced by Guinea-pig to carry the unwelcome load, but succeeds in passing it on, for the time being, to Annancy. Finally, in "[Gaulin]," he cuts a poor figure as the unsuccessful suitor. A Bantu story by no means complimentary to the Hare's intelligence is given by M. Junod,[18] and seems to have reached Louisiana[19] as "Compair Lapin et Michié Dinde," where the Rabbit gets his head cut off under the belief that the Turkey has removed his when he puts it under his wing to sleep. M. Junod thinks this must refer to a second species of Hare, a by-word for stupidity, as the other is for cuteness; but it is at least worth noting that the same story is told by the Basumbwa (south of Lake Victoria) of the Hen and the Tiger-cat.
Besides Annancy himself, and the "Tiger" already mentioned, we have, in these stories, either domestic or quasi-domestic animals: Cow, Hog, Dog, Puss, "Ratta," etc., or creatures indigenous to Jamaica, such as John-Crow, Chicken-Hawk, Sea-Gaulin, Candle-Fly, Crab and Tarpon. Some stories, for which I fail to recall any exact parallel, either in Africa or Europe, may be of purely local origin; this is most likely to be true of those which profess to explain some elementary fact in natural history, such as the inability of two bulls to agree in one pasture ("[Timmolimmo]"), or the hostility between dogs and cats. Even were this not so, the amount of local colour introduced (as always where tales are transmitted orally) could change them almost beyond recognition. This often has a very quaint effect, as in "[Parson Puss and Parson Dog]," who are evidently conceived as ministers of some rival Methodist denominations, and in the references to weddings, funerals, and dances possibly ending up with a free fight, as in "[Gaulin]," "[How Monkey manage Annancy]," "[Doba]," etc. Annancy's inviting the animals to his father's funeral and slaughtering them (with the exception of Monkey, who is too clever for him) reminds us of the Temne "Mr. Leopard fools the other animals,"[20] but in this, Leopard himself pretends to die. Cunnie Rabbit's test, "Die pusson nebber blow," is less ingenious than that applied by Brer Rabbit in "Uncle Remus:"[21] "When a man go to see dead folks, dead folks allers raises up der behime leg en hollers wahoo!" (In Mr. Owen's version, they "grin and whistle.") In the Sesuto story[22] the Monkey suspects a trick and escapes, when the Hare persuades the Lion to entrap the other animals by shamming death. Perhaps the baptism of the crabs ("[Annancy in Crab Country]") may be connected with "Mr. Spider initiates the fowls,"[23] where the Temne Spider, assuming for the nonce a quasi-religious character, gathers his victims together to celebrate the Bundo mysteries, and massacres them wholesale.
"[Annancy and Hog]" (XXXII.) is a fragmentary story, not very easy to understand as we have it, but something has evidently dropped out. The sentence "An' when Hog think him done up Annancy him done up him own mother" may point to some original similar to the Fiote story given by Mr. Dennett, in which the Leopard's wife is induced to eat her husband's head.[24] But in that case it is difficult to understand the connection with the opening incidents.
In "[John-Crow and Fowl-hawk]" (XLVI.) we may have a reminiscence of the class of stories represented by the Yao "Kalikalanje," in which an unborn child is promised by the mother in return for a service rendered her by some person or animal. The resemblance, however, is not very marked, and the incident is quite lost sight of in the later part of the story.