MYTHS OF fa.
Ma. JOHN WYNDHAM, when he was serving as a district officer among the Yorubas of Southern Nigeria, took pains to study the native folklore. He has retold the legends very simply, using blank verso rather than prose, and adding some lengthy note.. These Myths of (Erskine Macdonald, 58. net) deserve notice, for their occasional crudity does not conceal their resemblance to the primitive legends of other peoples, such as the Hebrews or the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Hindus or the Greeks. The Yorubas, it is clear, have long traditions, though they have not kept count of time and have never reduced their folk-tales to writing as the Oriental and European races did. In one legend a woman wrought the deliverance of her people by going to the land of the alien conquerors and buying, at the price of her virtue, the knowledge of the charm which was to work their destruction:— "Back from the rebel town Great Mbrimi
Rushed back, and cried ' The fire tho vulture brought
Shall slay the hosts of Ubo ! . The months crept by
Fate-laden, while King Ogun's warrior son, Ortinyan, schooled the sireless lads to War ;
But when the festive season came, he hid
Them with red fire prepared within the city, And, as the invading hosts of t bo scaled The walls, a rush of flaming boughs destroyed Grass garments and rebellious men. Thus fell (Tbo before Oranyan, and her folk Saw slavery in If& . . . "
The legends, as the author says, are " bare and uncertain," as primitive stories should be. Among his curious notes is an account of the method of divination practised by the priests with sand on a board, or with eight pieces of bark on a string, which form different combinations according as they fall with the outside or with the inside uppermost. Our administrators in Africa, as in India and elsewhere, show an increasing interest in the beliefs and customs of the peoples among whom they are stationed, and such work 149 Mr. Wyndham has done deserves every encouragement.
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