Chapter VII: A "Just So Story," a myth to explain the ways of animals. The

cauldron of Medea, which destroyed the wrong old person, and did not rejuvenate him, is introduced. "All the stories have been told," all the world over.

VIII. _The Disobedient Daughter who Married a Skull._--This is most original; though all our ballads and tales about the pretty girl who is carried to the land of the dead by her lover's ghost (Buerger's _Lenore_) have the same fundamental idea. Then comes in the common moral, the Reward of Courtesy, as in Perrault's _Les Fees_. But the machinery of the Nigerian romance leads up to the Return of Proserpine from the Dead in a truly fanciful way.

IX. _The King who Married the Cock's Daughter_ is AEsop's man who married the woman that had been a cat. As Adia unen pecks at the corn, the other lady caught and ate a mouse.

[Footnote 1: See the Platonic dialogue, Minos, 315-6, and Athamas in Roscher's _Lexikon_.]

X. _The Woman, the Ape, and the Child._--This tale illustrates Egbo juridicature very powerfully, and is told to account for Nigerian marriage law.

XI. _The Fish and the Leopard's Wife._--Another "Just So Story."

XII. _The Bat._--Another explanation of the nocturnal habits of the bat. The tortoise appears as the wisest of things, like the hare in North America, Brer Rabbit, the Bushman Mantis insect, and so on.

XIII., XIV., XV. All of these are explanatory "Just So Stories."

XVI. _Why the Sun and Moon live in the Sky._--Sun and Moon, in savage myth, lived on earth at first, but the Nigerian explanation of their retreat to the sky is, as far as I know, without parallel elsewhere.

XVII., XVIII. "Just So Stories."

XIX. Quite an original myth of Thunder and Lightning: much below the divine dignity of such myths elsewhere. Thunder is not the Voice of Zeus or of Baiame the Father (Australian), but of an old sheep! The gods have not made the Nigerians poetical.

XX. Another "Just So Story."

XXI. _The Cock who caused a Fight_ illustrates private war and justice among the natives, and shows the Egbos refusing to admit the principle of a fine in atonement for an offence.

XXII. _The Affair of the Hippopotamus and of the Tortoise._--A very curious variant of the _Whuppitie Stoorie_, or Tom-Tit-Tot story, depending on the power conferred by learning the secret name of an opponent. These secret names are conferred at Australian ceremonies. Any amount of the learning about secret names is easily accessible.

XXIII. _Why Dead People are Buried._--Here we meet the Creator so common in the religious beliefs of Africans as of most barbarous and savage peoples. "The Creator was a big chief." The Euahlayi Baiame is rendered "Big Man" by Mrs. Langloh Parker (see The _Euahlayi Tribe_). The myth is one of world-wide diffusion, explaining The Origin of Death, usually by the fable of a message, forgotten and misrendered, from the Creator.

XXIV. _The Fat Woman who Melted Away._--The revival of this beautiful creature, from all that was left of her, the toe, is an incident very common in folk-tales, i.e. the Scottish _Rashin Coatie_. (The word "dowry" is used throughout where "bride-price" would better express the institution. The Homeric [Greek: ena] is meant.)

XXV. _The Leopard, the Squirrel, and the Tortoise._--A "Just So Story."

XXVI. _Why the Moon Waxes and Wanes._--A lunar myth; not a poetical though a kindly explanation of the habits of the moon.

XXVII. _The Story of the Leopard, the Tortoise, and the Bush Rat._--A "Just So Story."

XXVIII. _The King and the JuJu Tree._--This is a fine example of Ju Ju beliefs, and of an extraordinary sacrifice to a Ju Ju power located in a tree. Goats, chickens, and white men are common offerings, but "seven baskets of flies" might propitiate Beelzebub. The "spirit-man" who can succeed when sacrifice fails, chooses the king's daughter as his reward, as is usual in _Maerchen_. Compare Melampus and Pero in Greece. The skull in spirit-land here plays a friendly part, in advising the princess, like Proserpine, not to eat among the dead. This caution is found everywhere--in the Greek version of Orpheus and Eurydice, in the _Kalewala_, and in Scott's "Wandering Willie's Tale," in _Redgauntlet_. Like Orpheus, the girl is not to look back while leaving spirit-land. Her successful escape, by obeying the injunctions of the skull, is unusual.

XXIX. _How the Tortoise overcame the Elephant and the Hippopotamus._--A "Just So Story," with the tortoise as cunning as Brer Rabbit.

XXX. _Of the Pretty Girl and the Seven Jealous Women._--Here the good little bird plays the part of the popinjay who "up and spake" with good effect in the first ballads. The useful Ju Ju man divines by casting lots, a common method among the Zulus. The revenge of the pretty girl's father is certainly adequate.

XXXI. _How the Cannibals drove the People from Insofan Mountain to the Cross River (Ikom)._--This professes to be historical, and concerns human sacrifices, "to cool the new yams," and cannibalism.

XXXII. is unimportant.

In XXXIII. we find the ordeal poison, which destroys fifty witches.

XXXIV. _The Slave Girl who tried to Kill her Mistress_ is a form of our common tale of the waiting-maid who usurps the place of her mistress, the Bride. The resurrection of the Bride from the water, at the cry of her little sister, occurs in a remote quarter, among the Samoyeds in Castren's _Samoyedische Maerchen_, but there the opening is in the style of _Asterinos and Pulja (Phrixus and Helle)_ in Van Hahn's _Griechische Maerchen_. The False Bride story is, in an ancient French _chanson de geste_, part of the legend of the mother of Charlemagne. The story also occurs in Callaway's collection of Zulu fairy tales. In the Nigerian version the manners, customs, and cruelties are all thoroughly West African.

XXXV. _The King and the 'Nsiat Bird_ accounts, as usual, for the habits of the bird; and also illustrates the widespread custom of killing twins.

XXXVI. reflects the well-known practices of poison and the ordeal by poison.

XXXVII. is another "Just So Story."

XXXVIII. _The Drummer and the Alligators._--In this grim tale of one of the abominable secret societies the human alligators appear to be regarded as being capable of taking bestial form, like werewolves or the leopards of another African secret society.

XXXIX. and XL. are both picturesque "Just So Stories," so common in the folk-lore of all countries.

The most striking point in the tales is the combination of good humour and good feeling with horrible cruelties, and the reign of terror of the Egbos and lesser societies. European influences can scarcely do much harm, apart from whisky, in Nigeria. As to religion, we do not learn that the Creator receives any sacrifice: in savage and barbaric countries He usually gets none. Only Ju Jus, whether ghosts or fiends in general, are propitiated. The Other is "too high and too far."

I have briefly indicated the stories which have variants in ancient myth and European _Maerchen_ or fairy tales.

ANDREW LANG.

FOLK STORIES

FROM SOUTHERN NIGERIA