the numerous tribes inhabiting the district of Unyamwezi, in German East Africa. Lest this should not be sufficiently definite, we may add that their habitat is about midway between the south-western corner of the Victoria Nyanza and the upper end of Tanganika.
The text of this story, with a literal French translation, is published in the Berlin Zeitschrift fur afrikanische und ozeanische Sprachen (vol. iii., fasc. 4), under the title "Muna mugunda ne Kanakami—Le Maître du Champ et le Lapin." Anyone with a little knowledge of any one "Bantu"[1] language cannot fail, on glancing over this Shisumbwa text, to recognise a fair proportion of words. Thus mwini, mwenyi, mwene, an owner, or chief, are found in various forms in Yao, Swahili, and Mang'anja; and mugunda, a garden, is the Yao mgunda, Mang'anja munda. But we must not let ourselves be tempted into a linguistic digression, further than to remark that the Rabbit's name affords a curious instance of divergence, where so many names of animals can be traced through ten or twelve tongues as being originally the same word. Here he is nakami, in Yao sungula, in Mang'anja kalulu, in Ronga (Delagoa Bay) mpfundla, in Zulu unogwaja! Whether all these names are applied to the same animal I should not venture to decide. M. Henri A. Junod (Chants et Contes des Ba-Ronga, p. 86) says that, in Basutoland, there are two hares (he calls Brer Rabbit "lièvre" throughout) bearing distinct names, and totally opposite characters. The Ba-Ronga, it would seem, have only one hare, whom they call mpfundla, and when they adopted (on the hypothesis that they did adopt) the Basuto tales, they attributed two sets of stories to the same animal, and so introduced glaring inconsistencies into his character. He is some
- ↑ This name, Bantu, is sometimes objected to, but after all it has gained a certain currency, and on Darwin's principle (Life and Letters, vol. iii., p. 46) will serve as well as any other—or better, for no one has yet proposed a practicable substitute.
