Reynard the Fox in South Africa: Hottentot Fabels and Tales

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. Kršnlein, Rhenish Missionary at Beerseba, Great Namaqualand; but it was not till after you 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 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 _N_sa1 Bushman language. Mr. KršnleinÕs 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 AlexanderÕs ÒExpedition of Discovery into the Interior of AfricaÓ (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. KršnleinÕs 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 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 seedÑin 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 oneÑshows a much greater congeniality between the Hottentot and European mind than we find between the latter and any of the black races of Africa.