of the distribution of San languages may be found in D.F. Bleek (1927, 1929b, 1956) and Westphal (1971).
2This convenient Afrikaans word meaning ‘field food’ will be used throughout.
3The following account is based on Bleek (1927: 57ff).
4‘Kaross’ is the common Afrikaans word for the skin cloak worn by San men and women.
5A sympathetic bond was believed to exist between a hunter and his quarry. Because of this, his activities, including his eating, were ordered by the need to prevent undesirable attributes, such as speed, from being transmitted to the game. See D.F. Bleek (1931–36, Part III: 233ff; Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 271ff).
6A commonly used powder made from the leaves of aromatic shrubs.
7This relationship is also discussed in Chapter 7.
8There is no evidence that the same attributes could be possessed by women.
9See Appendix B for a more detailed account of !Giten and their role in |Xam society.
10Details of these events are given throughout Stow, op. cit., and, more recently in Ellenberger (1953), and in Laurens van der Post (1958).
2
Introduction to the narratives: their context, performance and scope
Like many other San groups, the |Xam had a highly verbal culture. Indeed, speech was almost a continual social activity. In Dorothea Bleek’s words:
Men hunted for a few hours or a few days then had nothing to do as long as the game lasted. A woman’s daily task of gathering roots and wood and fetching water was soon finished except in times of scarcity. Half or more than half of each day was spent lounging about watching bird and beast, and talking – always talking. Every event of a hunt was told and re-told. Every phase of a meeting with other people, the action of each person and animal being described and acted, the voice and gesture admirably imitated (Bleek & Stow, op. cit., xxiiif).
It is easy to see how such a culture should be rich in narrative, how narrative would be part of daily living to an extent unknown in literate societies where leisure time is limited.
It is difficult for us to realise how large a part talking, and hence storytelling, makes in primitive man’s life. Where a man’s only labour is hunting which occupies only a few hours of a day, and probably not every day, there is an amount of leisure unparalleled among civilised people … There are many hours at midday under a bush and in the evening round a fire, when all sit and talk and listen. Stories mingled with songs accompanied by mimicry are the chief daily recreations (D.F. Bleek 1929a: 311).1
Such is the verbal context of the one hundred or so narratives collected by Bleek and Lloyd and indeed they show the impress of that context very clearly – particularly in their heavy use of dialogue, exploring narrative events now from one character’s perspective, now from another. Even in the difficult conditions under which they were recorded, these narratives are alive with speech.
The |Xam employed only one term for narrative, kum, (plural kukummi). There is no record of their making distinctions between kinds of narrative such as myth, legend or fable. All narratives were kukummi whether they related the activities of supernatural beings, humans or animals. The word also appears in the titles of narratives, for example: ||khã:ka kum – ‘the lion’s story’, or !gã ka kum – ‘the frog’s story’. The same word, however, was also occasionally used simply to mean conversation and news, although there is no doubt from the texts that narratives were formally structured and constituted a distinct mode of expression. Verbal formulae are often encountered as is the stylised treatment of certain familiar episodes in some of the narratives, and the use of song. By contrast, conversation amongst the |Xam does not appear to have been formal in any respect and not one example of a proverb or similarly structured discourse was recorded by either Bleek or Lloyd.
The great majority of kukummi are concerned with animal characters, although set in a time when the animals were human. These narratives may be simple fables or very complex and semantically dense – more suggestive of myth than fable. The characters in these narratives were the !Xwe-||na-s'o !kʔe,2 ‘people of the first or early race’ – a term similar to that used by the Zu|wa of today who refer to their stories of people long ago as Nǂwasi o n!osimasi, ‘stories of the old people’ (Biesele, op. cit., 96). The term was not exclusively applied to animal characters however: some kukummi which we might classify as legends – featuring human beings and often appearing to be set in an immediate historical past – were also said to refer to the !Xwe-||na-s'o !kʔe, as were those portraying the stars, the sun and the moon as people. These !Xwe-||na-s'o !kʔe were not regarded with any special reverence. Indeed they were said to be often stupid and lacking in understanding – hence their actions in the narratives are generally extraordinary and rarely correspond to what the |Xam would have regarded as normal or proper behaviour. This fictive early period seems to have been thought of as a formative one for the San race, where the raw materials of life – both cosmological and social – were constantly interacting, rearranging themselves, revealing social truths and the natural order of things. How the sun, moon and stars came into being; how death came into the world; how correct marriages were to be made; how the sharing of food resources was to be conducted; how young people should behave; where the sources of danger lay in social life, these and many other things are laid bare by the activities of the !Xwe-||na-s'o !kʔe.
Perhaps for this reason there is often a strong educational strain in many of the narratives. Lessons were drawn from them and explanations for customs and beliefs were to be found there too. The instruction of the young was very important to the |Xam and many narratives involving disasters, particularly to young people, conclude with the assertion that the characters who acted foolishly, and thus brought about disaster, had not received proper instruction from their parents. The importance of the education of young children is also frequently to be seen in the texts outside of the narratives or in the occasional asides of the narrators. Apart from their function as entertainments, therefore, kukummi were also regarded as the residuum of the social and practical knowledge which constituted an essential code of |Xam life – something to be learned by all. Through the naiveté and foolishness, as well, on very rare occasions, as the bravery and competence of the !Xwe-||na-s'o !kʔe, this knowledge was revealed.
There is no record of any specialised or socially recognised group of story-tellers in |Xam society, professional or otherwise. Story-telling seems to have been something which anyone might do, although Bleek wrote of |Ak!ungta, the youngest of his |Xam informants, that he could ‘relate hardly any of the numerous tales and fables which are met with in the traditionary literature of this nation’ (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 443), and it may have been the case that younger people lacked the knowledge of their elders and did not engage in narration very often.
The informants frequently attributed their knowledge of narratives to members of their family. Thus, for example, |Hangǂkass'o would tell a story that he said he had heard from his mother, |Xabbi-ang, perhaps adding that she in turn had heard it from her mother or some other relative. Informants attributed the great majority of their narratives to their mothers, although, as one would expect, no original authorship was ever indicated by this. However, several of Bleek’s male informants were not only familiar with a large number of kukummi but were clearly themselves also very used to performing. It cannot be construed from the predominance of mothers in the attributing of sources, therefore, that story-telling was primarily the province of women. While it was undoubtedly
