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Two Magic Birds: Part Two
| Article
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18661 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1991 |
3,164 Words |
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Retold by Jan Knappert
Jan Knappert is a retired London University professor of
African and Asian languages; he now devotes his time to
writing. A thorough explanation of the origin of Basotho tales
and one folktale used to educate young chieflings appeared in
our last issue. |
The Bantu folktales of the Basotho are rather different from those of most other African peoples. Tempered by early Christian influences, these stories tend to be of a more relaxed and benevolent nature and contain less cruelty and wickedness. Unlike other African tales, they also often have happy endings and usually contain moral messages; this is particularly uncommon of Bantu tales.
Like all myths, they have something to tell about the ways of living and thinking of the people from which they originate. This does not mean that they are an accurate reflection of the modern Bantu. Times change, in Africa as everywhere else, but for the student of the old ways of people, these folktales are an irreplaceable source of human understanding, of receiving message from the past, from people in a distant country with a distinct culture. At the same time, these tales possess literary beauty; they are gems of artistic creativeness, well worth preserving and presenting to a wider public.
This, the second part of our collection, contains two such stories. In the first the lesson is: "Parents! Never leave your children at home on their own. Take them with you to the fields and teach them agriculture. The neighbors and their children might lead them to their downfall." The magic bird is the spirit of an ancestor buried in the field. Ancestor spirits must be propitiated before cultivation can begin, since the land belongs to them--the spirits of the earth. Likewise, the thunderbird is an ancestral god, who looks after his descendants like a good grandfather, teaching them as well.
The second story is a warning and a lesson for fathers not to arrange their daughters' marriages foolishly. The hyena men are a famous breed of South African demons. They are nice men during the day, but by night they devour people. The father of the two girls is a fool, and so he loses his daughters.
Producer of Yogurt
There once was a woman called Mamasilo, who went out one day to cultivate a new field. But she did not know that this field actually belonged to a powerful god--or spirit, if you prefer that word--who sometimes appeared in the form of a bird. To Mamasilo, the field was just wilderness, weeds, and shrubs--a place to make a garden--so she proceeded to clear it away with her hoe. But after she had worked an entire day, Mamasilo was suddenly startled by a sound: "rrrr ..." It was a little bird perched on a shrub that she had not cleared away yet. The bird sang
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