PREFACE.

MY DEAR SIR GEORGE,

In inscribing to you this little book, I do no more than offer that which is your due, as its appearance is mainly owing to you. It was by your desire that I wrote, in 1861, to different Missionaries in South Africa, requesting them to make collections of Native Literature, similar in nature to those which, through your instrumentality, had been so abundantly rescued from oblivion in New Zealand. I then wrote, among others, to the Rev. G. Krönlein, Rhenish Missionary at Beerseba, Great Namaqualand; but it was not till after had left us, on a new mission of honour and duty, that I received from him (at five different periods) the original manuscripts from which most of the Fables given here are translated. He sent us, altogether, twenty-four

you

Fables, Tales, and Legends, besides twelve Songs of Praise, thirty-two Proverbs, and twelve Riddles; all in Hottentot (as taken down by him from the mouth of the Natives) and German, partly accompanied by explanatory notes, including fragments of the /Nusa Bushman language. Mr. Krönlein's manuscripts fill sixty-five pages, mostly in quarto, with double columns.

You are aware that the existence of Fables among the Hottentots was already known to us through Sir James Alexander's "Expedition of Discovery into the Interior of Africa" (8vo., two vols., London, 1838), and that some interesting specimens of their literature had been given by him in that work; but that Fables form so extensive a mass of traditionary Native literature amongst the Namaqua, has first been brought to light by Mr. Krönlein's communications. The fact of such a literary capacity existing among a nation whose mental qualifications it has been usual to estimate at the lowest standard, is of the greatest importance; and that their literary activity (in contradistinction to the general character

* Cisgariepian, from the Nama point of view, ie., to the North of the Orange River.

of Native literature among Negro nations) has been employed almost in the same direction as that which had been taken by our own earliest literature, is in itself of great significance.

Some questions of no trifling importance and interest are raised by the appearance of such an unlooked-for mine of literary lore, particularly as to the originality of these Fables. Whether they are indeed the real offspring of the desert, and can be considered as truly indigenous Native literature, or whether they have been either purloined from the superior white race, or at least brought into existence by the stimulus which contact with the latter gave to the Native mind (like that resulting in the invention of the Tshiroki and Vei alphabets) may be matters of dispute for some time to come, and it may require as much research as was expended upon the solving of the riddle of the originality of the Ossianic poems.

But whatever may be the ultimate result of such inquiries, whether it will confirm our idea of the originality and antiquity of the main portion of these Hottentot Fables, and consequently stamp them with the character of the oldest and most primitive literary remains of the old mother tongue of the Sexdenoting

nations, or whether they have only sprung up recently among the Hottentots from foreign seed-in either case the disposition of the Hottentots to the enjoyment of such Fables, and their easy growth on this arid soil, be it their native or adopted one-shows a much greater congeniality between the Hottentot and European mind than we find between the latter and of the black races of Africa.

any

This similarity in the disposition of nations can in itself indeed hardly be considered as a valid proof of common ancestry; but if there be other grounds to make us believe that the nations in question, or at least their languages, are of common origin, it may render us more inclined to assume that such a similarity in their literary taste is derived also from the

same source.

The great ethnological difference between the Hottentots and the black nations of South Africa has been a marked fact from almost the earliest acquaintance of Europeans with these parts, and occasional stray guesses (for example, in R. Moffat's "Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa," 1842, p. 6), have already for some time pointed to a North African origin for the Hottentots.

It is, however, only within the last dozen years

that this has been established as a proved, and, I believe to most observers, an, at first, astonishing fact. I well remember still the feeling of most curious interest with which I regarded Knudsen's translation of Luke's Gospel (vol. i., No. 15 of your Library), when, in April 1850, it was sent me by the then Inspector of the Rhenish Mission House, the Rev J. C. Wallmann, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the language was in any way akin to those of the surrounding black nations, and whether, on that account, an already acquired acquaintance with any of the Hottentot dialects would render it easier for a Missionary to master one of the Negro or Kafir tongues.*

*

* I give here some extracts from Mr. Wallmann's letter, dated Barmen, 13th April, 1850, which was the only help of a grammatical or lexical nature then available for me in my study of this Nama translation of Luke's Gospel :"I transmit hereby Luke's Gospel in Namaqua, which I can lend you, however, only for four weeks, as I have already previously promised it to some one else.

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'Should your labours permit it, I wish to request you to make a little trial whether the Namaqua is somewhat related to the South African family of Languages. For the present a mere negative decision on this point is all that is wanted, and I should like to have very soon the opinion of some good philologist regarding it. Moffat