events in the lives of the !Xwe-||na-s’o !kʔe, do not involve animals in human form, or even humans with animal names but simply human beings in a context which could be that of |Xam life contemporary with the time of collection. These narratives often involve mysterious or magical events but this was by no means a necessary condition for a narrative being said to be concerned with the !Xwe-||na-s’o !kʔe. Such a narrative is the simple tale of the man who ordered his wife to cut off his ears because his wife had shaved his brother’s hair so closely that he believed his brother had been skinned; wishing himself to have a similarly unusual appearance, he told his wife, against her protestations, to perform the operation and naturally ended up screaming with pain. This short narrative contains nothing magical, but the man’s foolishness may have been the aspect which marked him out as one of the !Xwe-||na-s’o !kʔe as far as the narrator was concerned. Other narratives of this kind concern dangerous encounters with lions and even conflicts with the !Korana which may well have had some foundation in actual events in recent history (see Chapter 3).
The majority of |Xam kukummi concern the !Xwe-||na-s’o !kʔe as animals – or rather people who were said to have later become the animals whose names they bear and who often also have at least some of the attributes of those animals. Apparently any living creature, from an elephant to the lava of a caterpillar, could be regarded as having once been one of the !Xwe-||na-s’o !kʔe. Many varieties of birds feature in these narratives, as do insects, burrowing animals, reptiles, large and small antelopes and beasts of prey. All are described as the !Xwe-||na-s’o !kʔe who preceded the |Xam in their country and, apparently, no special distinction was made between these characters and those, not identified with animals, who were the subject of historical legends. Nor were either of these groups of narratives regarded as more true than the other. Like the !Kung tales of today both seem to have been regarded as equally true or untrue with no clear distinction being made either way.
The themes of these animal narratives are various but often involve inter-family relations, the consequences of bad marriages and the conflicting interests of in-laws. Many of the problems which form their subject are caused by the fact that although the characters are in human form they are essentially animals. As such, difficulties inevitably arise if marriages take place between people who in their animal form would be incompatible. Such is the case of the Jackal who married a Quagga and was persuaded by his family that his wife was food and therefore should be killed. The Anteater and the Lynx are also both involved in the problems of making inappropriate alliances although here both creatures come to realise the order of things and articulate the need for proper marriages between animals and proper (i.e. animal-like) life-styles. The Lynx marries another lynx and lives as a lynx lives, while the Anteater becomes an actual anteater and lives in a hole.
All collections of San oral literature contain the notion that the animals were once people and were later changed into the animals we know. In the Bleek and Lloyd collection, narrators credited this change to the Anteater and the Lynx who commanded the animals to take their real form and henceforth live as animals – which they did (see Chapter 5).
Beside the animals, the sun, moon and stars were also said to have once been numbered amongst the !Xwe-||na-s’o !kʔe and the narratives concerning their lives on earth at that time often account for the existence and movements of celestial bodies. Such a narrative is the well-known account of the man whose armpit glowed with light while everywhere else was in gloom. While he slept a group of children, on the instructions of their mother, threw him up into the sky where he became the sun. The moon was also said to have once been a man, as was the ‘Dawn’s Heart Star’ Jupiter, while several stories describe two lions, !Haue ta ǂhou and !Gu, who, according to one narrative, are now the two pointers on the Southern Cross. Some narratives speak of whole families becoming groups of stars. In some instances such transformations were said to be caused by the disobedient actions of girls subjected to puberty observances, while some fragmentary narratives given by ||Kabbo simply describe the appearance of certain constellations as families of people moving across the sky, the children being the smaller stars, the parents the larger ones.
Many of the stars were given animal names. W.H.I. Bleek (1874: 102) comments:
With regard to the constellations, – it is especially worthy of remark that their names in Bushman seem, generally speaking, to be unconnected with their shapes in the sky, – and that many of them seem only to be named from the fact of their being seen at certain times when the animals, or other objects, whose names they bear, come into season, or are more abundant.
This led Bleek (loc. cit.) under the influence of Max Müller’s theory of myth,6 to the following speculation:
Of course, when such names as steinbok, hartebeest, eland, anteater, lion, tortoise, etc., had once become attached to certain stars or constellations, fancy might step in, and try to discover the shapes of those animals (or other objects) in the configuration of the stars; whilst at the same time, mythological personification would begin its work, and make the heavens the theatre of numberless poetically conceived histories.
While there is some evidence for this being the case in certain minor instances, there are only a few narratives where animals named are actually associated with those stars possessing animal names. However, there is no doubt that explanations for the presence of the sun, moon and stars were taken up into narrative form.
Apart from these narratives of animals and celestial bodies there are, finally, those concerning the supernatural beings who were part of |Xam religious belief. These narratives relate the activities of !Khwa (the Rain) and |Kaggen, the trickster associated with the mantis. The narratives involving !Khwa are mainly to do with the consequences of failure to observe the rules relating to girls during puberty. !Khwa is not credited with a human personality and never appears in the narratives in human form. In one instance he appears as an eland but most often he is a bull. He also takes the form of actual water and is described as appearing on the ground as a long shallow pool in the shape of a bull. In other narratives he does not actually appear but transforms people into frogs, snakes, and porcupines. He is always represented as threatening and the narratives concerning him appear to have been an important support for the beliefs and practices concerning menstruation.
The largest single group of narratives in the collection, and no doubt the best known, is that concerned with the trickster |Kaggen whom Dorothea Bleek (1929a: 305) describes as ‘the favourite hero of all |kham folklore’. Like !Khwa he was also part of religious belief, and stories and beliefs about him have been recorded from many parts of the Republic of South Africa although, in some instances, with marked differences in his nature in both narrative and belief. The further east he is found, the more his religious nature resembles that of a deity credited with having created everything in the world and prayed to for food (Orpen, op. cit.; Stow, op. cit., 119f, 134; Arbousset & Daumas 1846: 253ff; Potgieter 1955: 29). Amongst the |Xam, however, this aspect of him was undeveloped and instead he is presented as primarily working against their interests. The stories about him for the most part situate him in a family context where his impish personality frequently brings him into conflict with others. Unlike !Khwa, he does have a distinctively human personality and in the majority of the narratives the action centres on what he does. !Khwa’s presence in narratives, however, is only ever consequential upon the actions of others.
These groupings of |Xam kukummi are too broad to do full justice to the richness of the collection, but they do provide a general framework within which particular narratives or clusters of narratives can be discussed. Unsurprisingly, the narratives which come closest to them in terms of themes, motifs and plots are those of other San groups but there are many points at which they overlap with and show the influence of the narrative tradition of the Khoe-khoen. Indeed, it has been argued that in narrative as in many other cultural aspects, the distinction between what is San and what is Khoe-khoe can be at best only vague (Wilson & Thompson, op. cit.,
