the Moon and Hare, describing the origin of death, has been found widely distributed throughout both San and Khoe-khoe groups. Seven versions of this narrative were collected by Bleek and Lloyd, three of them from ǂKasing, whose father was a !Kora. Also in this collection is a version of the story of the woman who transformed herself into a lion, given by |A!kungta, which Bleek had acquired earlier from another source and published in his anthology of Khoe-khoen lore, Reynard the Fox in South Africa (1864). Similarly, a few narratives featuring the Khoe-khoe trickster, the Jackal, were collected from Bleek and Lloyd’s informants – three from ǂKasing and one each from ||Kabbo and Dia!kwain.
There are almost no signs of Bantu influence on |Xam kukummi. In only one case is it possible to discern the presence of Bantu oral tradition, and in that instance much modification has taken place in order to accommodate the narrative to the |Xam socio-cultural setting (see Chapter 10). Contact between the |Xam and the Bantu-speaking peoples was late and intermittent, whereas trading was carried out between the |Xam and the Khoe-khoen, inter-marriage was common and, as Shula Marks (1972) has pointed out, in situations where San acquired cattle the Khoe-khoen became devoid of them, cultural distinctions became blurred.
The long process of extermination to which the |Xam were subjected continued late into the 19th century. The few remaining San lived in fear of random attacks by ‘commandos’. Cultural extinction was also threatened ‘as the |Xam took to menial farm work for the white farmers. In 1929 Dorothea Bleek (1929a: 311f) wrote:
Fifty years ago every adult Bushman knew all his people’s lore. A tale begun by a person from one place could be finished by someone from another place at a later date.7 In 1910 I visited the northern parts of the Cape Colony and found the children, nephews and nieces of some of the former informants among the few Bushmen still living there. Not one of them knew a single story. On my reading some of the old texts a couple of old men recognised a few customs and said, ‘I once heard my people tell that’. But the folklore was dead, killed by a life of service among strangers and the breaking up of families.
The collection made by Bleek and Lloyd indeed represents an opportunity taken which was soon to disappear. In the chapters which follow, these narratives are discussed in several groupings: the legends and the narratives involving !Khwa are discussed together, these being the only narratives in which, with the exception of !Khwa himself, the characters are not associated either with animals or with celestial bodies. The sidereal and animal narratives are then discussed, and these chapters are followed by a detailed examination of the complex of beliefs and narratives concerning |Kaggen.
Notes
1This perhaps idealised version of hunter-gatherer life does have some support from recent studies. See Lee (1968b, 1969b) and Sahlins (1972: 1–39).
2Literally, ‘first-at-sitting-people’.
3The |Xam made distinctions between the San living in various areas. Those living on the plains were the ‘Flat People’, others were the ‘Grass People’, the ‘Mountain People’ and so on.
4Such observation also marks |Hangǂkass’o’s statement that ‘Bushmen talk with the body of their tongue, while Europeans are those who talk with the tip of their tongue’ (L. VIII, (20) 8528 rev.).
5This same aspect in another oral literature is discussed in Lord (1958: 14–29).
6In the same paper, p. 98, Bleek makes it clear that he had read Müller’s Comparative Mythology and his Introduction to the Science of Religion.
7Miss Bleek may have been thinking here of a particular version of the story of the Moon and the Hare (L. IV, (4), 3882–89) which was begun by ǂKasing and concluded later by Dia!kwain.
3
Legends and the stories of !Khwa
Contained in the Bleek and Lloyd collection are many narratives which are clearly fictional, and a few which are clearly factual. Between these categories there are a number of narratives which appear to be grounded in fact but which contain fictional elements which are elaborated to varying degrees in different narratives. It is evident from such narratives that factual accounts of real events were subjected to a fictionalising process taking place over a long period of time which could ultimately convert the account into pure fiction.
These remarks particularly apply to a small group of narratives which shall be here termed legends. These narratives frequently relate events which could, and probably did, have some foundation in historical fact. They recount the activities of human beings, and these humans, like the animals prior to their transformation into animal form, were said to be !Xwe ||na s’o !kʔe. In spite of the characters in these narratives being thus called the temporal setting of the stories cannot be regarded as mythological time for they are clearly set in a recent past which was not significantly different from the world of the |Xam in the 19th century. Furthermore, magic and other non-naturalistic elements are, if not totally absent, usually inessential features of the plot. Thus, as a group, they conform precisely to William Bascom’s classification of legends (Bascom 1965: 4f) while some evince those characteristics which Bascom further attributes to narrative material which has moved in the course of time from a factual base towards the fictive. He writes (ibid.):
Reminiscences or anecdotes concern human characters who are known to the narrator or his audience, but apparently they may be retold frequently enough to acquire the style of verbal art and some may be retold after the characters are no longer known at firsthand. They are accepted as truth and can be considered as a sub-type of the legend, or a proto-legend.
It would seem that at some stage during this process the characters described came to be regarded as !Xwe ||na s’o !kʔe and this designation may itself have legitimated further fictional elaborations.
These legends number only about a dozen although a few of them are amongst the longest and most carefully told in the collection. They tend to be concerned with the responses of individuals to dangerous situations involving either beasts of prey – notably lions – or !Korana war parties. A few, such as the story of the man who ordered his wife to cut off his ears, are certainly apocryphal and are to do with the deeds of notably stupid people. Of those dealing with people in danger some warn against carelessness and describe what befell those who were insufficiently cautious; others describe resourceful or intelligent responses to dangerous events.
Dorothea Bleek (1929a: 310) has pointed out that the |Xam do not seem to have had legendary human heroes.
I think that their life in small family groups scattered over very wide spaces has tended to make the surrounding animal world and the heavenly bodies loom large in their sight, the human hero small.
Certainly this is the impression given by the Bleek and Lloyd collection. However, while individual human heroes are not celebrated, bravery, independent thinking and social responsibility often are. Indeed the value of these qualities is implicit throughout the entire range of |Xam narratives and it is possible that some of the narratives which had a foundation in historical fact were elaborated from news which specifically demonstrated the value of these qualities. In all cases what happened is of more importance than who performed the action.
What narrators made of their central core of fact illuminates much about the principles of |Xam oral composition. As soon as news became distanced from its immediate source it was open to special emphases, the introduction of motifs from existing stories, the recasting of dramatis personae, the employment of songs and, indeed, a host of traditional elements as well as the individual narrator’s personal
