383 



A SELECTION OF SIRONGA FOLKLOEE. 



collected by 



Rev. Herbert L. Bishop. 



Read July 11, 1922. 



A cycle of stories about Nwampfundla, The Hare, from the 

 Maputu country (South of Delagoa Bay). 



Told by tht' hite Samuel Mabika, in his youth a great 

 warrior, a man of considerable importance in his tribe. With the 

 srhallest possible variation — everything in the tales cannot be 

 translated — the stories are written down exactly as I heard them. 

 It is, unfortunately, impossible to reproduce the vivacity, the 

 interpretative gesture, the free use of " descriptive comple- 

 ments," and the very evident enjoyment of the stories shown by 

 the narrator. 



In his " Les Chants et les Contes des Baronga," and in his 

 later work, " The Life of a South African Tribe," the Rev. H. 

 A. Junod has given other forms of some of these stories, differ- 

 ing considerably in detail, and in the connection of the incidents, 

 from the sliort series of tales as they were told to me. Perhaps 

 a comparison of the different versions may be worth while, as 

 helping to fix that typical form of the Hare stories characteristic 

 of the BaRonga, which he desiderates on p. 198 of the latter work 

 as a first step in a careful comparative study of the stories 

 throughout the Bantu field. 



N.B. — The Hare is, in the stones, called " Nwampfundla." 

 " Nwa," literally " son of," is often used as an equivalent of our 

 " Mr." Nwampfundla may, therefore, be translated " Mr. 

 Hare." 



I. 



Nwampfundla and the Lion*. 



Well, there was a lion with his family, his wife and four 

 little lion cubs. And they were always hungry; so the lion, their 

 father, used to go every day to hunt and to kill animals to feed 

 his family. Now when he had killed a buck, he used just to 

 eat the flesh, and tlnow all the other things away, because the 

 lion thought, " Oh, I liave no time to wash the things that are 

 inside and to clean them so as to mak-e them fit for eating." So 

 the lion did every day. 



Now one day, when tlic lions had just finished eating, the' 

 hare came and said to the lion, " Oh, lion, whv do j'ou throw 

 ail those things away; are they not good to eat?" 



