who promises him hidden gold. A wry look at superstition and confidence tricksters. “‘Oh, yes, the money, Baas Gysbert,’ the witch-doctor said, his face lighting up with intelligence and apricot brandy. ‘Oh, yes, the money that is buried here on Baas Gysbert’s farm.’”
Black Maria Slang term for a police van used to transport prisoners (L&O: 135 “The Old Magistrates’ Court”).
Black, Stephen (1880-1931) Journalist, playwright, novelist, short-story writer. Born in Cape Town and educated at Saint Saviour’s Upper Boys’ High School and Diocesan College, he worked as a sports and crime reporter on the Cape Argus from 1906. In 1910 he formed his own theatre company and toured SA and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He lived in England from 1913 to 1915, where he wrote articles for London’s Daily Mail, and in France from 1918 to 1927. A number of Black’s plays have been published. Three Plays (1984; edited by Stephen Gray) contains Love and the Hyphen (1908, revised 1928-29), Helena’s Hope, Ltd. (1910) and Van Kalabas Does His Bit (1916). He is also the author of two novels: The Dorp (1920) and The Golden Calf: A Story of the Diamond Fields (1925). Black was founder of the literary magazine The Sjambok (1929-31), which in May 1929 published one of HCB’s early pieces, “In the Beginning”, smuggled out of prison. After HCB left prison, other fiction – “In Church” (January 1931) and “The Night-dress” (February 1931) – and journalistic pieces followed. HCB met Black in the last year of the latter’s life and (briefly) revived The Sjambok as the The New Sjambok. See “Stephen Black”.
Blackburn, Douglas (1857–1929) London-born, he came to SA in the early 1890s and worked on The Star. He spent nearly two decades in the country. At the time of the Jameson Raid he became the proprietor-editor of the weekly newspaper The Sentinel, and during the Boer War years worked on both sides of the front as a correspondent. His most important novels are Prinsloo of Prinsloosdorp: A Tale of Transvaal Officialdom (1899; reissued in 1978 and 1989), A Burger Quixote (1903; reissued in 1984) and Leaven: A Black and White story (1908; reissued in 1991). The last of these is an early example of the ‘Jim Comes to Joburg’ genre. The first two are important precursors in style and theme to the work of Pauline Smith and, in particular, HCB. They both use a larger-than-life narrator who relates his various picaresque adventures in a tongue-in-cheek manner.
Blake, William (1757–1827) English Romantic poet, painter and mystic; famous for his poetry sequences Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794); HCB quotes a line from Blake’s For Children: The Gates of Paradise (1793) (VS: 174 “Die Duistere Vers”).
blerrie Corruption of the swearword ‘bloody’, rendered in a low-Afrikaans form, with the appropriate Afrikaans pronunciation and inflection (CSJ: 74).
blesbok (Afr.) Blesbuck; lit. ‘bald buck’ (Damaliscus pygargus phillipsi); medium-sized purplish antelope with white face; grassland animal that is found only in SA (UD: 33 “The Picture of Gysbert Jonker”; OTS: 34 “A Tale Writ in Water”).
blesbuck See blesbok.
Blignaut, Aegidius Jean (1899–1994) Journalist, short-story writer and biographer. Born in the Free State, he went to school in Kroonstad and later worked as a journalist in Johannesburg. In the 1930s he edited a number of satirical magazines with HCB (including The Touleier, 1930–31, The New L. S. D, 1931–33, and The New Sjambok, 1931). A recidivist convict (con man, fraudster, extortionist), he spent chunks of the 1930s in prison, and in fact was held there ‘at his majesty’s pleasure’ for a long spell from 1934 onwards. Probably in order to escape yet another lengthy gaol sentence, if not in fact the ‘indeterminate sentence’, he left for Britain and served with the RAF in the Second World War, remaining in Britain thereafter. He is best remembered for his simple-seeming and yet complex ‘Hottentot Ruiter’ narrator-figure, which influenced HCB’s ‘Schalk Lourens’ character and is part of a tradition of SA ‘oral-style’ stories. The Hottentot’s God (1931), Blignaut’s first collection of stories (introduced by HCB), features Hottentot Ruiter. Few (if any) copies of this privately published volume have survived, however, and Dead End Road (1980) was issued to bring the stories back into print. The stories Ruiter narrates all deal with his picaresque exploits and in one of them Schalk Lourens himself makes an appearance. Blignaut is also the author of the memoir My Friend Herman Charles Bosman (1981), and edited Death hath Eloquence (1981), a selection of HCB’s poetry. Talitha (1984) is a further selection of Blignaut’s stories.
Aegidius Jean Blignaut (NELM)
Blikwinkel (Afr.) Lit. ‘Tin Shop’; place through which Charlie Hendricks drives in his flight from Willemsdorp (W: 209).
blinkblaar (Afr.) Lit. ‘shiny leaf’; Pterocarpus rotundifolius (L&O: 142 “Marico Revisited”).
Blinkwater (Gorge) (Afr.) Lit. ‘shining water’ (CJ: 131 “Climbing Table Mountain”).
Bloemhoek Scene of an abortive police operation to entrap a town councillor under the Immorality Act. Having learned from this incident, Sergeant Brits is hesitant to collude with Marjorie Jones to entrap a white man (W: 153).
Blokland (Afr.) Name of ox; lit. ‘Block Land’ (OTS: 29 “Jakob’s Trek”).
Bloo-drimms Blue dreams; euphemism for hallucinations caused by smoking dagga (W: 63).
Bloom, Jack Manager or owner at the Plaza (CJ: 206 “Jam Session”).
Bloomberg, Charles Sunday Times journalist and author of Christian Nationalism and the Rise of the Afrikaner Broederbond in South Africa, 1910–1940 (1990). Son of Willie Bloomberg, he was present at HCB’s funeral, and was a friend to Helena, offering to place on computer her handwritten memoir of her late husband. Abrahams describes him as “a man of unique personality whose career in investigative journalism was to leave a mark or two on the historical record” (RB: 161).
Bloomberg, Willie Dedicatee of HCB’s Mara (‘To Willie Bloomberg, a republican who found a king’ – see poetry, plays), Abrahams describes him as a “dental engineer, socialist and bibliophile who had given HCB refuge when he needed a place to sleep after his release from prison” (RB: 140). Edgar Bernstein remarked that he “was one of the first to appreciate Bosman’s talent” (RB: 8).
“Blot on Benoni’s Escutcheon, A” See “Pride of the Reef”.
blotting paper Absorbent paper used to absorb excess ink from the surface of writing paper in the days when nibbed pens were dipped in ink (MR: 80 “Bechuana Interlude”).
bloubos (Afr.) Lit. ‘blue bush’; Diospyros lycioides; hardy shrub with bluish-green leaves, smooth bark, fragrant flowers and colourful fruit (IT: 40 “Local Colour”).
blouklip (Afr.) Lit. ‘blue stone’ (OTS: 42 “The Affair at Ysterspruit”).
Blouta Black or coloured female servant of Stefanus Aucamp (OTS: 102 “The Ox-riem”).
blue Prison slang for ‘under the influence of dagga’ (CSJ: 104).
“Blue Cylinder” Title of a sketch in “Romance: A Sequence”.
Blue Princess, The See Poetry.
blue tongue Debilitating sheep disease, often ruinous for sheep farmers (H: 189 “Easy Circumstances”). Also known as catarrhal fever, it is a viral disease found mainly in sheep, and certainly not in humans, as suggested in S&H: 76 “The Story of Hester van Wyk”.
bluebottles Jan Ockerse mentions that he was
