In conclusion, I would briefly glance at five stories which I have grouped together as derived from a common African original, and which present several features of interest, though I am unable to examine them as much in detail as I should like to do. These are "[The Three Sisters]" (VII.), "[Gaulin]" (XXIV.), "[Yellow Snake]" (XXXIV.), "[John Crow]" (XLIII.), and "[Devil and the Princess]" (LI.). The type to which these may be referred resembles the one registered by Mr. Jacobs as the "Robber-Bridegroom"; but the African prototypes are certainly indigenous, and it might seem as if the stories Mr. Jacobs had in view were late and comparatively civilized versions of the corresponding European and Asiatic ones, the Robber being the equivalent of an earlier wizard or devil, who, in the primitive form of the story, was simply an animal assuming human shape. The main incidents of the type-story are as follows:
(1) A girl obstinately refuses all suitors.
(2) She is wooed by an animal in human form, and at once accepts him.
(3) She is warned (usually by a brother) and disregards the warning.
(4) She is about to be killed and eaten, but is saved by the brother whose advice was disregarded.
A Nyanja variant of this story, where the bridegroom is a hyena, corresponds very closely with the Temne "Marry the devil, there's the devil to pay" (Cunnie Rabbit, p. 178)—even to the little brother who follows the newly-wedded couple, against the wishes of the bride, and who is afflicted—in the one case with "craw-craw," in the other with sore eyes. A translation of the Nyanja story may be found in the Contemporary Review for September, 1896. In Mrs. Dewar's Chinamwanga Stories (p. 41) there is a variant,—"Ngoza,"—where the husband is a lion. In the Machame story, previously alluded to, the hyena, having befriended a girl, marries her, and she escapes with some difficulty from being eaten by his relations. Yet another variant is "Ngomba's Balloon" in Mr. Dennett's Folklore of the Fjort. Here the husband is a Mpunia (translated "murderer")—apparently a mere human bad character, and Ngomba escapes by her own ingenuity.
In the Jamaican stories it strikes one that the idea of transformation is somewhat obscured. We are told how "[Gaulin]" (Egret) and "[John Crow]" provide themselves with clothes and equipages—the latter a carriage and pair, the former the humbler local buggy;—and this seems to constitute the extent of their disguise. Yellow Snake is said to "change and fix up himself"—but the expression is vague. Gaulin, however, can only be deprived of his clothes (and so made to appear in his true shape) by means of a magic song. The "old-witch" brother, who has overheard the song, plays its tune at the wedding and thus exposes the bridegroom, who flies out at the door. "John-Crow" is detected by a Cinderella-like device of keeping him till daylight, and his hurried flight through the window (in which he scraped the feathers off his head on the broken glass) explains a characteristic feature of these useful but unattractive birds.
In neither of these is the bride in any danger: but in "[Yellow Snake]" her brothers save her when already more than half swallowed; in "[Devil and the Princess]," she escapes by the aid of the Devil's cook, who feeds the watchful cock on corn soaked in rum. In this story, too, it is not the girl's brother, but the "old-witch" servant-boy, who warns her; and, as he is cast into prison for his pains, he has no hand in the release. In two cases ("[Gaulin]" and "[John Crow]") Annancy is one of the unsuccessful suitors, and, in the former, "Rabbit" is another. (He, apparently, takes no steps to change his shape, being rejected on the ground that he is "only but a meat," i.e., an animal.) In the Nyanja story, Leopard and Hare are mentioned as meeting with refusals, before the Hyena arrives on the scene. "[The Three Sisters]," while keeping one or two points of the original story, is much altered, and seems to have introduced some rather unintelligible fragments of an English ballad (as to which see [Appendix], [p. 286]). The Snake is never accepted; and the youngest of the sisters, who answers him on behalf of all, would seem to represent the "old-witch" brother who detects his true character. His "turning into a devil" is another alien element—perhaps due to Biblical recollections, and the concluding assertion that he "have chain round his waist until now" seems to refer to something which has dropped out, as there is no previous allusion to a chain in the story as it stands. Of all the five, "[Yellow Snake]" is, on the whole, the closest to what we may suppose to have been the original; "[Devil and the Princess]" is in some respects complete, but has acquired several foreign features, and "[John Crow]" has quite lost the characteristic conclusion. It is to be hoped that we may one day succeed in discovering, if not all the African variants of this story, yet enough to render those we possess more intelligible, and to afford materials for an interesting comparative study.
A. Werner.