4l6 S.A. NATIVES AND PRIMIIIVK FOLK CUSTOM. 



first to enter, as when an Alpine bridge was built, the devil 

 demanded the first life that went over, and the Bishop cheated 

 him with a fowl, showing the commutation of human founda- 

 tion-sacrifice, so I hear the natives sometimes founded their 

 house with the sacrifice of a dog. As the French say in sprinkl- 

 ing the image when rain is wanted, " St. Melaine bedew us, 

 my good Saint Melaine, as I bedew thee," so the Basuto women 

 cry on the mountain, " Ee, pula ! Rain!" and both men and 

 women go in single file sprinkling water with a btmch of grass. 

 As St. Patrick got into trouble for lighting his Paschal fire 

 before the King's Beltane, so in September, our South African 

 spring equinox, the chief must l)e the first to light the 

 new fire. 



I have tried in this paper (for which I must apologise if I 

 have asked yoti too closely for comfort to " observe." as the 

 old writer says, " the beastly devices of the heathen "), I have 

 to prove two things; first, that the customs of races in whose 

 blood we many of us share (for British blood, if not Dutch, is 

 very mixed, and indeed it has been held that there was never 

 famous race which was not), the customs of these old races of 

 Europe, who have left, I say, their traces in us still, were quite 

 as strange and more horrible, sometimes, than those we find 

 among otu^ natives here. And the comparison does not merely 

 hold good of immemorial eld, for some of our Eiu'opean 

 parallels are found in historical times and even in the present. 

 Sucli things as human sacrifice which appears to be imknown 

 among our South African folks, were not only offered by Kelts 

 (who scalped also and slung heads to the saddlebow) to the 

 thunder god, as by Picts to the stm god before them, l^ut some 

 dread practice of the sort was revealed in Ireland only a few 

 vears ago. In view of this we mav well have some mercy on 

 black men for stabbing the dead, lest they themselves should 

 swell (perhaps really due to an instinct of humanity to prevent 

 men dying slowly of wounds in wars where no quarter was 

 given), or taking portions of a corpse for medicine believed to 

 be necessary. To take less revolting practices, the scanty 

 clothing of the native in his normal state, though appropriate 

 to the climate, may seem strange to us white skins, twice over 

 bleached in a subglacial climate, but when we read of Spencer's 

 Irish with their one garment, and a Bohemian nobleman who, 

 in 1603, found them with less (and yet they could talk with 

 him in Latin, saying that he must feel his clothes very trying, 

 and wouldn't he take them off), when we hear still later of the 

 Ciubbingses of Devon, whom Fuller called Scythians, one who 

 like myself is proud to be Irish-Devonian must confess that 

 the gentle savage of Africa has still some chance, if properly 

 dealt with. Custom is the king of men. as Darius said when 

 the corpse-burning (ireeks and the corpse-eating Indians 

 mutually disgusted one another and anthropology gives us 

 audience of that king, that we may learn from him to raise as 

 we have been raised by sympathy of others, and not to pas-; 

 by in despair or cast out in contempt. We must thus be Good 

 Samaritans like Him Whom Christians call the Saviour of the 

 World, though born of a subject race, and condemned by a 

 rulintr one. 



