CHAPTER XXX 



FOLKLORE 



THE folklore of the Liberian peoples is that of all Negro 

 Africa. It is perhaps most luxuriant amongst the 

 Vai. 



It is not my intention in this book to deal with this subject 

 at any length, because it has already been illustrated to some 

 extent by Koelle in his writings on the Vai people, by Miss 

 Cronise in her stories of the Temne and Mende people,^ and by 

 the Rev. C. F. Schleuker in his translations from the Temne 

 language of Sierra Leone.- The stories given by these authors 

 can many of them be recognised in similar tales from Western 

 and Eastern Liberia. 



There is a remarkable similarity in these beast stories 

 throughout Negro Africa, from the Senegal to Zululand and 

 from Cape Colony to Somahland and the Egyptian Sudan. Of 

 course, to a certain extent they link on (I believe) with fables 

 that are still told in North Africa, and they are of one family 

 with the beast stories of mediaeval (and no doubt prehistoric) 

 Europe, with ^sop's fables of the Eastern Mediterranean region, 

 and with the beast stories of the American and Australian 

 aborigines. There is a considerable resemblance in structure and 

 subject between the African beast stories and the folk-tales of 

 Northern Europe which have come down to us through their 



' ('unnie Rabbit and the other Beef. 



' A Collection of Tem)te Traditions, Church Missionary Society, l86j. 



1083 



