412 S.A. NATIVES AXD PRIMITIVE FOLK CUSTOM. 



SO widespread in South Africa l^etween the husband and wife's 

 family. Thus, if T ask a native woman the name of her hus- 

 band's father with a view of fittinj^' her in my register with a 

 patronymic surname after the English fashion, she will remain 

 silent or laugh and look ashamed, and another woman must 

 answer for her. Again, if I were a native in my hut, my 

 mother-in-law, if I had one, would cough and carefully cover 

 herself with her blanket before daring to enter. 



But a time must come when right is distinguished from migiit, 

 and it is more convenient to pay for your wife than to steal her. 

 Did this long" stride forward take place in the stage when man 

 was like poor Tom " that eats the swimming frog, the toad, 

 the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water-newt " and " rats and 

 mice and such small deer" like our little native herd-boys, be- 

 cause he was not yet able to attack large beasts? Or had he 

 already learnt to attract his bride or her father by saying like 

 Caliban : — 



I pr'y thee, let ine bring thee where crabs grow* 

 And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts ; 

 Shew thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how 

 To snare the nimble marmoset ; I'll bring thee 

 To clustering lilberts. and sometimes I'll get thee 

 Young scamels from the rock ; Wilt go with me ? 



"I pray thee now. lead the way without any more talking," 

 answers the young lady in the words of Stefano. Or in the 

 next ag'e, the period of tb.e mighty hunters of the mammoth 

 and the reindeer, when man had already begun his age-long" 

 appointed work of subduing the earth and all that is therein, 

 he must have paid for his brideprice his best kaross, the spoil 

 of his prey, or a stone axe or flint knife, or perchance a deft 

 etching of reindeer or one of the old monsters now extinct, 

 done upon the bone thereof (as found in the caves of Perigord). 

 or perhaps tender portions of the carcase of the beast. And 

 here we have an interesting survival in the Sesuto name of a- 

 marriageable girl, the little [)erson who makes a man tame 

 cattle for her (or her father), marking" the very beginning of the 

 domestication of animals, when the bridegroom had to prove 

 his manhood by bringing" the dread wild ox, tamed, to his lady's 

 or her father's feet. We may smile at the roughness of those 

 old days, but what men those remote forefathers of ours must 

 have been. We think ourselves superior, and in manv wavs 

 are. to dark races of the present day, but how should we face a 

 lion or leopard with but a spear, as they do to the north, and 

 are represented with great vigoiu" as doing in our rock paintings 

 at Modderpoort. 



The Bushmen, still in the hunter stage, had clear survival in 

 their marriages (at least with the incoming black men) of the 

 traditional capture. One of the lion clan to which our deacon 

 belongs married a Bushwoman, and offered three cattle, which 

 were accepted, instead of enduring" the rain of blows which the 

 thickskulled bridegroom had usually to bear, thus marking" the 

 passage from capture to dowry, when the pastoral Bantu arrived 



* Probably for many millennia, though, crab-apples would not yet have 

 appeared. 



