ARTS AND CRAFTS OF THE XOSAS : A STUDY 

 BASED UN PHILOLOGY. 



By James McLaren, M.A. 



{Read, July lo, iyi8.) 



Arts and crafts were much more fully developed and culti- 

 vated among the native races in ancient days than they are now, 

 when all sorts of articles of dress and adornment and all sorts of 

 tools and utensils can be readily purchased in the traders' shops. 



A trade or craft, and also the workshop where it was carried 

 on, was i-shisliijii. The craftsman was i-iicibi,_ fitter, repairer, 

 skilled workman, and he was a craftsman in' wood, iron, leather, 

 or other material, iiicihi ycmiti^ ycntsiuiibi, yeciknmba. The 

 materials used were various, and included stone, clay, metals, 

 wood and other vegetable substances, and the skins, hides, horns 

 and bones of animals. 



They used stone, ili-tyc. for millstones, but these were 

 selected rather than wrought. An egg-shaped boulder or cobble 

 from the shore or the river-bed formed the grinding stone, im- 

 hokotwc ; a fiattish or slightly hollowed hard stone of oblong 

 shape formed the under stone or bed. on which the grinding was 

 done, ilityc loknsila. To pick or sharpen a stone is xola, and the 

 pointed cold chisel with which this is done in-xola. A stone with 

 a round hole bored through it used 'for weighting the digging 

 stick. i{lii-i^xa, for digging up roots and sometimes for breaking 

 up ground, was known, though borrowed from the Bushmen. 



Of clay, u-dongwc, they made pots for cooking. i)n-bi"a, 

 jars for holding water and Kafir beer, mn-paiida, and round head- 

 shaped bowls for holding food, etc.. i-nqayi, as well as smaller uten- 

 sils, such as drinking-cups. The pot-clay, u-dongzu'c, was taken 

 from the river-bank or from a pit. mixed with water, and then 

 trodden with the feet and worked with the hands till it was a 

 plastic mass of prepared clay, iim-dongwc. The potter, usually a 

 female, took a lump of this, and with her hands and a piece of 

 wood laboriously moulded, biimba, the clay into the shape 

 desired, giving it a thickness oif from a quarter to half an incii. 

 It was then dried in the air, and when quite dry was surrounded 

 and filled and covered with cakes of dried cowdung. wdiich was 

 set alight to fire the clay. To glaze the pot, Kafir-corn was 

 ground to meal, put into the pot and cooked to a pap, with which 

 the pot was rubbed outside and in. This was done repeatedly, 

 till the pot was sufficiently glazed. The result was not very 

 artistic, owing to the unequal firing of the pot depending on the 

 way the wind blew. Tiie Xosas also moulded figures, or dolls, 

 of clay, ici-tomo, resembling those of the earliest races of man- 

 kind, in which the most notable thing was the want of propor- 

 tion in the size of the different parts of the body. The clay 



