Reynard the fox in South Africa: or, Hottentot Fables and Tales, chiefly translated from original manuscripts in the Library of His Excellency Sir George Grey, K.C.B.

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 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 ǀNūsa [1] 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 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 any of the black races of Africa.

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. [2]

I had, however, at that time not the least idea of the results to which a knowledge of this language would lead me; and being then mostly occupied with the study of the Setshuâna and kindred languages—which seemed to me of paramount interest for comparative philology—I did not at first give undivided attention to the perusal of this curious volume. I remarked very soon, however, a striking similarity between the Hottentot signs of gender and those of the Coptic language; but for some time I considered it as purely accidental, which may be seen from a letter of mine regarding this subject, published by Mr. Wallmann, in “Berichten der Rheinischen Missions-Gesellschaft” (Reports of the Rhenish Missionary Society, 1850, No. 24, if I am not mistaken in the number).

Soon, however, what were at first mere isolated facts, became links, in a chain of evidence, showing that all those Sexdenoting Languages which were then known to us in Africa, Asia, and Europe, are members of one large family, of which the primitive type has, in most respects, been best preserved to us in the Hottentot language.

It was even as early as the end of 1850 that I could write to Mr. Wallmann—“This language (the Hottentot) is to me at this moment of greater interest than any other. The facts, of which once before I have given you some account, have now so increased upon me, and offer such strong analogies, that there is no further doubt in my own mind that not only the Coptic but also the Semitic, and all other languages of Africa (as Berber, the Galla dialect, &c., &c.) in which the distinction of the masculine and feminine gender pervades the whole grammar, are of common origin.”

Part of the result of these researches was then published in my dissertation, “De Nominum Generibus Linguarum Africæ, Australis, Copticæ, Semiticarum aliarumque Sexualium” (8vo., Bonn, 6th August, 1851, vol. i., No. 1 of your Library).

I was at that time not aware—nor has it come to my knowledge till within the last few weeks—that on the 10th June, 1851, Dr. J. C. Adamson, in communicating to the Syro-Egyptian Society some observations on the analysis of languages, with a special reference to those of South Africa, had stated “That the signs of gender were almost identical in the Namaqua and the Egyptian, and the feminine affix might be considered as being the same in all three” [3] (Namaqua, Galla, and Old Egyptian).

Another curious agreement on this point, by an apparently independent observer (Mr. J. R. Logan), [4] was pointed out to me by your Excellency. You also suggested this name of “Sexdenoting Languages.” But it is superfluous for me to say any thing of what you have done for the advancement of African, as well as Australian and Polynesian, philology.

It has been justly remarked by our learned friend, Mr. Justice Watermeyer, that the natural propensities of animals in all parts of the world being so much alike, Fables intended to portray them must also be expected to resemble each other greatly, even to their very details.

But we may well ask why it is that, so far as we know, the Kafir imagination seems not at all inclined to the formation of this class of fictitious tales, though they have otherwise a prolific Native literature of a more or less historic and legendary character. This contrast to what we find among the Hottentots appears not to be accidental, but merely a natural consequence of that difference of structure which distinguishes these two classes of languages, embracing respectively the dialects of the Hottentots on the one hand, and those of the Kafirs and their kindred nations on the other; in the former (the Hottentot), as in all other really Sexdenoting Languages, the grammatical divisions of the nouns into genders, which do not tally exactly with any distinction observed in nature, has been brought into a certain reference to the difference of sex; and on that account this distinction of sex seems in some way to extend even to inanimate beings, whereby a tendency to the personification of impersonal objects is produced, which in itself is likely to lead the mind towards ascribing reason and other human attributes to irrational beings. This is the real origin of almost all those poetical conceptions which we call Fables and Myths. Both are based on the personification of impersonal beings—the former by ascribing speech and reason to the lower animals, whilst the latter substitute human-like agencies in explanation of celestial and other elementary phenomena in place of their real cause.

Mythology is, in its origin, most generally either a mere figure of speech or a poetical explanation suggested by the grammatical form or etymological meaning of words, indicating certain striking natural phenomena. In the primary stage of their production, Myths may be supposed to have been always understood in their true original character; and it is only when in the course of generations their real origin has been obscured, and they have become merely the petrified excrescences of a traditionary creed, that their apparent absurdity makes them at first sight almost inexplicable, particularly when found among nations of a high intelligence.

The humbler sisters of the Myths, the Fables based on the natural propensities of animals, are not obscured in their real character so easily as the former, and have, on that account, more generally retained their simple usefulness as moral teachers; so, though they may have preceded even Myths as to the date of their first conception, they yet outlive them as real and salutary elements of the best national literatures: not that Myths had not their own beneficial sphere in the education of mankind, as leading them on to higher abstract ideas, and even deeper religious thoughts, but their very power of exerting a much deeper influence on the destinies of our race, made it essential that they should have a more transitory existence in the civilizing process of the Sexdenoting nations—who have to give up mythologies so soon as through them they have gained higher religious ideas—while Fables, which never claim so high a place among the elements of furthering the eliminating process of our species, remain always welcome to most classes of readers at certain periods of their intellectual development.