'I.HE FOLK-LORE OF THE VELD.
THE lore of the veld as it is known to the Boer in the Cape Colony is not only an interesting, but in many ways an instructive study. It is always remarkable that in a
new country, where the conditions of life are changed, and where the environment is totally altered, the superstitions of the Old World should have lived and given rise to new fancies, new myths, and have undergone so little change themselves. The basis of the present-day folk-lore of the veld is double. On the one band it represents the fragments, easily recognisable and curiously unmodified, of European superstitions, while on the other it has the mass of native tradition and myth which years of complete wildness have accumulated. The combination of the two has produced a kind of folk-lore that has the characteristics of both European and native myths, while it has some special features of its own sufficient to warrant its claim to a separate category and class. The natives have retained many of the superstitions of their ancestors, and have twisted and distorted others by the introduction of stray scraps learned from the newcomers. The European settlers have acted simi- larly, and in both cases additions have accrued from various causes. Native folk-lore, of which such enthusiastic inquirers as Doctors Bleek and Hahn and Theal have only touched the fringe, is far too complicated and wide a subject to be dealt with in a short paper; but in treating of the Boer folk-lore of the veld the influence which the speculations of the aboriginal wise men have had on the native mind must not be overlooked. For such influence has undoubtedly been great, and has in its turn been transmitted from the native to the white man, until to- day it is almost impossible to draw a sharp line of demarca- tion between the superstitions of the Boer and the beliefs of the native. They are like two circles which cut one another. Between the points of section lies a land that is common to both, where native legends, mingled with the white myths of the morning lands and the darker tales of magic and mystery of the West, assume a different complexion and become essen- tially hybrid and South African.
The life of the Boer boy on the farm begins not in the nursery but on the open veld. In charge of the native servant, who binds him on her back in a springbuck kaross while she washes her mistress's linen in some stream near the house, he goes to the veld and listens to what she tells him. His first impressions of the common objects around him are clouded by what he has been informed as to their properties and powers. All about him lies a vast new world, of which he has to read the signs by the light of the knowledge which the ayah imparts. One of the writer's first recollec- tions is of the ayah pointing up to the sky, which was speckled, as the face of a freckled man is spotted, by a multitude of tiny cirrus clouds that formed fantastic arrangements amongst themselves. " Some one is dead when the sky is like that, baasie [young master]," she said impressively, and told how many proofs she bad in support of the theory. On another occasion Ayah Kaatjie found two beautiful white bleached bones of a buck that had died on the veld, and wrapped them up in her handkerchief. " For mad oxen, young master," she said; and when we came home she showed how one could fore- tell the future by noticing the way in which the "mad oxen" fell across each other when they were thrown into the air and allowed to fall on an open space which had been brushed with scented thyme. If the left fell across the right it was a good sign, but if it passed underneath the other it was a token of the gravest significance. With these "mad oxen," which are formed from the tail vertebrae of some veld animal, one can forecast the future and tell the events which are going to happen the same day. The only essentials are that the bones should have been picked up when they were white-bleached, and that the collector should have been the person who actually intends to employ them. Nothing concerning the past or events that have already taken place can be ascer- tained by their use, while all authorities admit that every- thing depends upon the interpretation of the signs.
The belief in magic is general amongst the veld Boers, and, indeed, throughout the Cape Colony, and the fantastic jugglery of the travelling Malay painters has done much to strengthen the belief. For the most part the proofs which are adduced in support of this belief may be
explained by any conjuror, and the legends which have been constructed upon their basis are rarely worthy of serious notice. Some of the superstitions are evidently based on facts, for it is undoubtedly true that many of the so-called " snake doctors" who are regarded as magicians and wizards of the first order are thoroughly acquainted with the healing virtues of many herbs and simples!. A general belief is that madness may be produced by giving the victim a pinch of powdered spider in his tea. The species of spider employed belongs to the genus mygale, one of the trapdoor-making kind, and though it is exceedingly hairy and ugly-looking, its bite is not poisonous, nor. does it seem to possess any marked toxic properties when it has been dried and powdered. Madness pro- duced in such a manner can only be cured by the person who was instrumental in bringing it about, and then by a variety of plants and animals, the directiot►s for effecting a cure differing in almost every district. The herbalists, both Boer and native, employ a large number of plants and animals, and allege that they have cured cancer by the use of a decoction of amaryllis bulbs. A stranger remedy for the same disease is a paste made of the leaves and roots of a brilliantly flowered leguminous plant that grows in many parts of the Colony. The Colonial botanist relates that at the time of the illness of the late Emperor Frederick a number of German farmers made up a parcel of the leaves of this plant andforwarded it to the Emperor with a recommendation that he should use it after breakfast ! No doubt many of these plants possess powerful virtues of which both Boer and native know the use, but it is more diffi- cult to understand for what reason goat's dung and the excre- menta of the rock coney are given a place in the pharmaco- poeia. The former is used in cases of measles and scarlet fever, and is only valuable as a diuretic, while there are other and less disgusting remedies equally efficacious.
One of the most remarkable of Cape superstitions, purely Boer, for the natives know it only from the Boers, is the strange properties possessed by the man met die helm. One often hears the expression, "I am afraid of So-and-so ; he has been born with the helm:' The theory is that certain children are born with an additional membrane round the skull, and that as long as they preserve this covering (which the nurse carefully removes and dries) they are able to look into the future and to possess a kind of second-sight. A. man born with a helmet foresees the death of a near relation by seeing a funeral procession pass in front of his bedside, and numerous instances are on record, it is alleged, of accurate forecastings on the part of such singularly gifted beings. It is impossible within the limits of a short paper to do more than touch upon the various beliefs to which the Cape farmer, indoctrinated as he already is with a religion that has an unusually mystic and superstitious catechism, attaches full faith. To eat the marrow in a salted bone is a sure way of producing madness on the veld; to look behind one's left shoulder while crossing a road an equally certain way of seeing ghosts when the moon is full. The bald legendary stories of the natives have been encrusted with fanciful additions that make them more complicated, but scarcely add to their beauty. Indeed, the folk-lore of the South African Boer is, like his religion, extremely prosaic. There are no fairies for him, though there are Watergode, water demons who haunt the dark deeps of some shaded hippopotamus-hole where the nests of the weaver-finches overhang the water. There is a tinge of ancestral colour in the belief that on Old Year's Eve the world turns round, and the gran mannetjes, beings analogous to the German Kobolds, creep out to steal the firewood for their midnight revels. The source of another belief—namely, that the howling of a dog foretells disaster, since the animal sees a visitor from the nether world—is also easily traceable ; but it is less easy to discover whence arose the curious belief, which prevails in certain of the eastern districts of the Cape Colony, that it is unsafe to cut short a sneeze ! From native sources are derived the many superstitious beliefs concerning the praying mantis and stick insect, the butcher-bird and the Stanley crane, while the devil-bee (the death's-head moth) owes its reputation for vindictiveness and deadli- ness to the influence of European teachings. Most of the folk- lore of the veld concerns morbid subjects,—death and dying, the already dead and those about to die, sickness and disease, tempest and bad weather, and dire events. The more innocent fables are generally of native origin. and some of them are decidedly pleasing. The folk-tales—how the sand lizard's mother would not allow him to be married, how the jackal christened his children, and how the baboons got the better of the tigers—are known to every Boer boy and girl, and deserve a wider public, for they are thoroughly original and smell of the veld. Some South African Grimm is needed to discover and put on record the many fairy-tales of the Maqua tribes and the higher Damaras, which are said to be extremely curious and interesting. Some of them are known to the Boers, but in general the Cape farmer does not care for such things. He prefers the more morbid subjects, and leaves the less exciting episodes to his children. It is extremely rare nowadays to meet a farmer who has at his fingers' ends the details of the history of the " little brother with the lame leg," " the iron mouse," or "the crowned snake,"—three folk-tales which were at one time well known. More widely spread is the belief in Ou paai bully, an imaginary person who fulfils a role somewhat similar to that of the bogey man. Antjie Somers, a woman with a beard who kidnaps naughty children, seems to rest on some historical basis ; while Klaus Vaakie', the little man in the red cap who brings sleep, is so obviously a German importation that he deserves no place in the assembly of purely South African characters of evil and good genii The subject _is most interesting, and one that deserves better study and closer attention than have hitherto been devoted to it. The field is as wide as the veld itself, for almost every district has its traditions, and there are local myths and superstitions that scarcely gain credence outside their special spheres. The natives outside the daily influence of the Cape Boers preserve for the most part their folk-lore untainted and unaffected by European legends; but the most interesting por- tion to study is undoubtedly that where aboriginal and intro• duced myths have been assimilated, and have produced a folk- lore of their own possessing the characteristics of both parents. And that portion lies in the Cape Colony, especially in the Karroo districts, away from the railway lines, where civilisa- tion is scarcely in full swing yet, and.where the old ideas are still everywhere in sovereign power.
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