NATURE 



629 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 21, 1913. 



ETHNOGRAPHY OF NORTHERN NIGERIA. 



Hausa Superstitions ami Customs: an Introduc- 

 tion to the Folklore and the Folk. By Major 

 A. J. N. Treinearne. Pp. xv + 548 + plates + 

 map. (London : John Bale, Sons, and Daniell- 

 son, Ltd., 1913.) Price 21s. net. 



IN this book Major Tremearne has provided 

 students of folklore with a feast of tales 

 from Northern Nigeria, and it may be said at 

 once that the material is arranged in such a way 

 as to enable the reader to deduce from the tales 

 themselves a very fair picture of the ethnography 

 of the people amongst whom they were collected. 

 The main portion of the book consists of one 

 hundred stories, each of which is accompanied 

 when necessary by a note on the local variants 

 and on parallel tales in other parts of the world. 

 The stories are preceded by a chapter in which 

 they are analysed, and which contains all that can 

 be deduced from them relative to the manners 

 and customs, the mode of thought, and the beliefs 

 of the Hausa, together with many explanatory- 

 passages drawn from the author's own experi- 

 ence and reading. They are followed by notes 

 which explain separate words or incidents in each 

 tale, the existence of each note in a particular 

 story being indicated by a number inserted in the 

 text. The book concludes with two short chapters, 

 on tribal marks and on the Bori dance respec- 

 tively. 



The first, or analytical, section has been care- 

 fully prepared, and contains much material which 

 will be of value to anthropologists at large. It 

 can scarcely be studied apart from the tales them- 

 selves, and the serious student will find it neces- 

 sary to read this section carefully both before and 

 after studying the text of the legends. The great 

 majority of the stories were obtained at Jemaan 

 Daroro, in the Nassarawa Province, from five in- 

 formants, two soldiers, two personal servants, and 

 the head of the leather-workers, and the table of 

 contents indicates the individual responsible for 

 each. 



A great feature of this collection is constituted 

 by the number of stories in which animals figure 

 as the chief characters, and, as might be expected, 

 one is continually reminded of "Uncle Remus." 

 The favourite character, however, is not " Brer 

 Rabbit," but the spider (which plays also a very 

 large part in Jamaican folklore,). He is invariably 

 shown as the epitome of greed and cunning, and 

 though he sometimes comes to grief, he is gener- 

 ally successful in outwitting the other animals. 

 A less frequent character, though more consistently 

 NO. 2286, VOL. 91] 



successful in his trickery, is the jerboa, while the 

 hyaena is the buffoon whose unintelligent greed 

 nearly always lands him (or her) in difficulties. 

 Here we have typified the general morality of the 

 native as expressed in his folklore ; cunning and 

 wit are the passports to success, and the man who 

 possesses them to a sufficient degree may be ex- 

 cused dishonesty, cruelty, and greed. The one 

 unpardonable sin is stupidity, though disobedience 

 to the wishes of parents is also usually visited 

 with punishment. It is not, however, low cunning 

 only that is held up for admiration ; mental acute- 

 ness of a high order is also highly esteemed, and 

 a certain number of stories occur which celebrate 

 judgments of a Solomon-like order. The point 

 lies rather in the fact that there seems little, if any, 

 distinction in the native mind between the two 

 varieties of cleverness. 



Many of the stories have their counterparts in 

 other regions of the world ; we have our old friend 

 the tar-baby, and a story of the equally familiar 

 "open sesame" type; a cumulative tale, similar 

 to that about the old woman and the pig, is also 

 found, and a whole host of characters, such as 

 many-headed giants, witches (who must be utterly 

 destroyed even to the last drop of blood to prevent 

 their resurrection), half-men (like the Japanese 

 Ippi), and so forth. 



Etiological tales are disappointingly few; but 

 one interesting example explains the relative posi- 

 tions of the eye and eyebrow. In this is related a 

 contest between a man called " You-are-wiser-than- 

 the-king " and the ruler ; the latter chases the 

 former, both assuming a variety of shapes, until 

 finally the king's adversary falls into the eye of 

 an old woman and becomes the pupil, while the 

 king transforms himself into the eyebrow to watch 

 for the other to come out, and thus they remain. 



One story, apparently told in all seriousness, is 

 interesting as showing singular deficiency in 

 mental arithmetic. A man dies leaving a fortune 

 of 20,001 cowries. It falls to the lot of the king 

 to divide this among three children, and he is at 

 his wits' end to know how to divide the one 

 cowrie. Finally, the aid of a wise man is called 

 in, and he divides the inheritance piecemeal, finally 

 leaving six cowries, of which he gives two to each 

 and thus solves the extraordinarily difficult 

 p roblem. 



Especially worthy of remark is a very full ac* 

 count of the sign-language current among the 

 Hausa, which is found in the first section of the 

 book, and also the short account of the Bori dance, 

 in which the performer becomes possessed by a 

 definite spirit with a definite name and attributes. 

 This dance is now forbidden. 



The book contains a large number of illustra- 



C C 



