ence physique du lièvre et de l'homme à ce moment-là. A chaque ligne on rencontre de ces inadvertances. . . . ."
One of these inadvertences, to name no more, is found in the Shisumbwa story, where the Rabbit seizes the Tar-Baby with his hands. So, too, a Mang'anja tale in my MS. collection gives the Swallow a hut with all orthodox arrangements—the hearth in the middle of the floor, and the stage (nsanja) above it, on which meat and other things are dried—and a wife who cooks gourds in an earthen pot. In another, the Rabbit's wife goes down to the river with her water-pot like any native woman, and is caught by the Crocodile when stooping to fill it.[1] Numberless touches of the same sort could be quoted from Uncle Remus, but he has a much more sophisticated consciousness of the difference between "folks en de beasteses" than the native African.
M. Junod remarks that this "personification" of animals is emphasised in the Ronga tales by the honorific prefix Nwa, which can be rendered, according to circumstances, by Mr., Mrs., or Miss, and is equivalent to the Yao Che. Thus we have Nwa-Mpfundla, Nwa-Ndlopfu (Mr. Elephant), and in Yao Che-Sungula, &c. No doubt Brer Rabbit, Miss Cow, &c., are echoes of the same usage. There is an opening here for a grammatical dissertation on the "m or living-person" class, and the transference into it of animal names properly belonging to another, when the animals are considered with reference to their personality. But we must not forget that we set out with the Tar-Baby.
M. Junod, in a note to the tale we have just quoted from him, refers to a story in M. Heli Chatelain's "Folk-tales of Angola," where the Rabbit and the Monkey (whom we have not hitherto found in his company) are lamentably caught by "de belles filles-mannequins," whom they are
- ↑ The text of this tale is given in "Zeitschrift für afrikanische und ozeanische Sprachen, 1897, Heft iii.
