Chapter I: Foreword

My thanks are due to Dr. Maitland Park, Editor of The Cape Times, and Adv. B. K. Long, M.L.A., Editor of The State, for their kind permission to republish such of these tales as have appeared in their papers.

For the leading idea in "The Sun" and "The Stars and the Stars' Road," I gladly acknowledge my indebtedness to that monument of patient labour and research, "Specimens of Bushman Folk-lore," by the late Dr. Bleek and Miss Lucy Lloyd.

Further, I lay no claim to originality for any of the stories in this collection--at best a very small proportion of a vast store from which the story-teller of the future may draw, embodying the superstitions, the crude conceptions, the childish ideas of a primitive and rapidly disappearing people. They are known in some form or other wherever the negro has set foot, and are the common property of every country child in South Africa.

I greatly regret that they appear here in what is, to them, a foreign tongue. No one who has not heard them in the Taal--that quaint, expressive language of the people--can have any idea of what they lose through translation, but, having been written in the first instance for English publications, the original medium was out of the question.

Clear cold evenings, with a pleasant tang of frost in the air, figure here and there in these pages, but as I write other scenes, too, flit across the lighted screen of Memory--noontides of tropic heat with all the world sunk in a languorous slumber, glowing sunsets, throbbing summer nights when the stars seemed to tremble almost within one's reach, moonlit spaces filled with soft mystery and the thousand seductive voices of the pulsing southern night. And always, part and parcel of the passing panorama, the quaint figure of the old Native with his little masters....

It is nearly three years now since "Old Friend Death" took him gently by the hand and led him away to that far, far country of which he had such vague ideas, so he tells no more stories by the firelight in the gloaming; and his little masters--children no longer--are claimed by graver tasks and wider interests. But in the hope that others, both little ones and children of a larger growth, may find the same pleasure in these tales of a childlike race, they are sent out to find their own level and take their chance in the workaday world.

S. M.

Cape Town, January, 1914.

CONTENTS.

Page
I. The Place and the People 1
II. How Jakhals Fed Oom Leeuw 12
III. Who was King? 29
IV. Why the Hyena is Lame 43
V. Who was the Thief? 47
VI. The Sun 54
VII. The Stars and the Stars' Road 63
VIII. Why the Hare's Nose is Slit 70
IX. How the Jackal got his Stripe 78
X. The Animals' Dam 88
XI. Saved by his Tail 101
XII. The Flying Lion 108
XIII. Why the Heron has a Crooked Neck 118
XIV. The Little Red Tortoise 128
XV. The Ostrich Hunt 139

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Page
Outa Karel and Little Jan--The Little Red Tortoise Frontispiece
"The Stars' Road" 64
"The women with their babies on their backs, flew" 81
The punishment of Broer Babiaan 99
"'Do you know, little Red Tortoise, in one moment I
could swallow you.'" 136
"The Ostriches ran faster and faster" 144

GLOSSARY.

Awa-skin, skin slung across the back to carry babies in. Askoekies, cakes baked in the ash.

Baas, master. Baasje (pronounced Baasie), little master. Babiaan, baboon. Berg schilpad, mountain tortoise. Biltong, strips of sun-dried meat. Bolmakissie, head over heels. Bossies, bushes. Broer, brother. Buchu, an aromatic veld herb.

Carbonaatje, grilled chop.

Dassie, rock-rabbit.

Eintje, an edible veld root.

Gezondheid! Your health!

Haasje, little hare. Hamel, wether.

Jakhals draaie, tricky turns.

Kaross, skin rug. Kierie, a thick stick. Klein koning, little king. Kneehaltered, hobbled. Kopdoek, turban. Kopje, hill. Krantz, precipice. Kraal, enclosure.

Lammervanger, eagle. Leeuw, lion.

Maanhaar, mane. Mensevreter, cannibal.

Neef, nephew. Nooi, lady or mistress. Nonnie, young lady, miss.

Oom, uncle. Outa, old man, prefix to the name of old natives.

Pronk, show off.

Reijer, heron. Riem, leathern thong. Rustband, couch.

Sassaby or Sessebe, a South African antelope. Schelm, rogue; sly. Schilpad, tortoise. Sjambok, whip of rhino or hippo hide. Skraal windje, fine cutting wind. Skrik, to be startled; also fright. Slim, cunningly clever. Smouse, pedlar. Soopje, tot.

Taai, tough. Tante, aunt. Tarentaal, Guinea fowl. Tover, toverij, witchcraft.

Vaabond, vagabond. Vlakte, plain. Voertsed, jumping aside suddenly and violently. Volk, coloured farm labourers. Volstruis, ostrich. Vrouw, wife. Vrouwmens, woman.

Zandkruiper, sand-crawler.