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¹³ Schoffeleers, ‘The Zimba and the Lundu state’, 346–9, 354.Google Scholar

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¹⁵ Judges 5:4–5. Cf. Pss. 17, 29 and Habakkuk 3.Google Scholar

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²⁰ Junod, H., ‘The ethnological situation in Portuguese East Africa’, Bantu Studies, x (1936), 309. In Bantu languages it is the special privilege of divinity to dispense with a nominal prefix.Google Scholar

²¹ Heintze, B., ‘Der südrhodesische dziva-Komplex’, Anthropos, LXII (1969), 337–68.Google Scholar

²² Crazzolara, J. P., The Lwoo, part I (Verona, 1950), 43–4,Google Scholar However, songs quoted by Hofmayr, W., Die Schilluk (Mödling bei Wien, 1925), 405, show that the river was also seen as Nyikang's mother. He was in any case the conqueror of the sun and giver of rain.Google Scholar

²³ de Rop, A., Lianja, l'épopée nationale des Mongo (Brussels, 1964).Google Scholar

²⁴ For the etymology see Guthrie, M., Comparative Bantu (Farnborough, 1967–1971), IV, CS 1934 and attachments.Google Scholar

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²⁸ Notwithstanding the passionate critique by Jan Vansina, who is reluctant to concede that myths may have a life that extends far beyond tribal boundaries: ‘Is elegance proof? Structuralism and African history’, History in Africa, x (1983), 307–48. The theme is not, however, exclusively Bantu, being found also in the conflicts of Indra and Namuci, Zeus and Typhon and in the North American battle (or lacrosse match) between the Thunders and the Serpents.Google Scholar

²⁹ Schoffeleers, Guardians of the Land, 162–3;Google ScholarRangeley, W. H. J., ‘Two Nyasaland rain shrines’, Nyasaland J., V (1952), 31–50;Google ScholarMetcalfe, M., ‘Some Nyasaland folk-lore tales’, Nyasaland J., VII (1954), 46–9;Google ScholarBruwer, J. P., ‘Remnants of a rain cult among the Acewa’, African Studies, xi (1952) 179–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁰ Schoffeleers, ‘Symbolic and social aspects’, 276.Google Scholar

³¹ Jones, Gwyn and Jones, Thomas (eds.), The Mabinogion (London, 1949), 37–40.Google Scholar

³² Colle, R. P., Les Baluba (Brussels, 1913), II, 420;Google ScholarBurton, W. F. P., Luba Religion and Magic in Custom and Belief (Tervuren, 1939), 4–8; de Heusch, Roi ivre, 15–30.Google Scholar

³³ Genesis 6–9.Google Scholar It has been shown by Hendel, Ronald S. (‘Of demigods and the Deluge’, J. Biblical Literature, CVI (1987), 13–26) that the decree of 6:3 is integrally related to the story of the Flood.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁴ Vansina, ‘Is elegance proof?’, 312.Google Scholar

³⁵ Schoffeleers, ‘Ideological confrontation’, 260–1.Google Scholar

³⁶ The earliest full version is that used as a translation exercise in Le Veux, R. P., Manuel de langue luganda (Algiers, 1914, but used in Uganda from 1883).Google Scholar Others include Roscoe, J., The Baganda (London, 1911), 460;Google ScholarKagwa, A., Engero za Baganda [Tales of the Ganda] (London, 1927), 1–8;Google ScholarJohnston, H. H., The Uganda Protectorate (London, 1902), II, 700–5.Google Scholar

³⁷ Phiri, Kings M., ‘Chewa history in central Malawi and the use of oral tradition’ (Ph.D thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1975), 41.Google Scholar

³⁸ Schoffeleers, M., ‘The religious significance of bush fires in Malawi’, Cahiers des religions africaines, X (1971), 272–82.Google Scholar

³⁹ As it happens, this cliché of African cosmogonic speculation was not very wide of the mark; creatures that might be called the first man and the first woman did leave their footprints on a lava flow in Tanzania.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Gluckman, M., ‘The Lozi of Barotseland’, in Seven Tribes of British Central Africa, ed. Colson, E. and Gluckman, M. (London, 1951), 26–7.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Ibid., 19.

⁴² See Schoffeleers, ‘Symbolic and social aspects’, 8, 253.Google Scholar

⁴³ ‘Ideological confrontation’, 262–3; ‘Oral history’, 171–2.Google Scholar

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⁴⁵ E.g. Lestrade, A., Notes d'ethnographie du Rwanda (Tervuren, 1972), 61;Google ScholarSmith, Pierre, Le récit populaire au Rwanda (Paris, 1975), 128.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Hence the proverbial assurance, ‘Not all Kintu's children perished’. In the same spirit the distinguished African physician Professor G. Monekosso, speaking on BBC Radio not long ago about the worsening medical situation, including the AIDS nightmare, remarked: ‘We have no plans to disappear’.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Schoffeleers, ‘Oral history’, 179.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Lévi-Strauss, C., The Raw and the Cooked, trans. Weightman, J. and Weightman, G. (London, 1969), 35–65.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Roberts, A. D., A History of the Bemba (London, 1973), 39.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Roscoe, J., ‘Further notes on the manners and customs of the Baganda’, J. Anthrop. Inst., XXXII (1902), 25–6;Google ScholarKaggwa, A., The Kings of Buganda, ed. and trans. Kiwanuka, M. S. M. (Nairobi, 1971), 6–7.Google Scholar The full version is in Kagwa, A., Ebika bya Buganda [The Clans of Buganda] (Kampala, 1949), 7–9.Google Scholar (An English translation made available by J. A. Rowe is in Makerere University library. I am very grateful to Professor Rowe for a copy of this document.) The story is also told by Nsimbi, M. B., Amannya Amaganda n'Ennono zaago [Ganda names and their meanings] (Kampala, 1956), 222–3.Google Scholar

⁵¹ In Vansina's one-line summary Kintu ‘disappears from remorse over having killed a lover of his wife’ (Oral Tradition as History (London, 1985), 169).Google Scholar

⁵² Sexuality as the disruptive factor was established in one of the oldest recorded myths, the Mesopotamian tale of Enkidu, the wild man who lived with the beasts until he encountered a woman, after which he had to become civilized — and mortal. In a modern version, it was adolescence that put an end to Mowgli's idyll (Kipling, Rudyard, The Second Jungle Book (London, 1923), 263–95).Google Scholar

⁵³ Chadwick, H. M. and Chadwick, N. K., The Growth of Literature, iii (Cambridge, 1940), 589–90.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Smith, E. W. and Dale, A. M., The ha-Speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia, ii (London, 1920), 182–3.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ ‘Religious significance of bush fires’; also in The Early History of Malawi, ed. Pachai, B. (London, 1972), 91–103; ‘Symbolic and social aspects’, 412–15.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Schoffeleers, M., ‘The Nyau societies, Society of Malawi Journal, XXIX (1976), 59–68;Google ScholarRangeley, W. H. J., ‘The “nyau” in Kotakota District’, Nyasaland j., 11 (1949), 35–9, and III (1950), 19–33;Google ScholarHodgson, A. G. O., ‘Notes on the Achewa and Angoni of the Dowa District of the Nyasaland Protectorate’, J. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., LXIII (1933), 123–64.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Jung, C. G., Symbols of Transformation (Collected Works, vol. v, London, 1956), 145ff.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Vansina, J., The Children of Woot (Madison, 1978), 34–5.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Berger, Ruth C., in Prelude to East African History, ed. Posnansky, M. (London, 1966), 157–8.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Richards, Audrey, Chisungu a girls' initiation ceremony among the Bemba of Northern Rhodesia (London, 1956), 106.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Dr Roberts reminds me that he was the first to bring the Ring into the discussion of African tradition (History of the Bemba, 48n.). And he was certainly one of the first to see African genesis myth for what it is.Google Scholar

⁶² Cf. Gamitto, A. C. P., King Kazembe, trans. Cunnison, I. (Lisbon, 1960), 103.Google Scholar

⁶³ See especially Okpewho, I., Myth in Africa: A Study of its Aesthetic and Cultural Relevance (Cambridge, 1963).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, 8. History and structure are not really antitheses, nor does structural analysis of myth condemn Africa to eternal stasis, as Schoffeleers has alleged (‘Oral history’, 164–5).Google Scholar

⁶⁵ The nyau of Malawi are clearly related, etymologically and otherwise, to the myaao spirits of the Fipa and the migavo of the Nyamwezi, and it is hard not to connect the term with the ethnic designation ‘Yao’, though in this case the phonetics would be irregular.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Kagwa, A., The Customs of the Baganda, ed. Edel, M. M. (New York, 1934), 9–11.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Stanley, H. M., Through the Dark Continent (London, 1978), 222–8;Google ScholarKaggwa, Kings, 71–3.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Roscoe, The Baganda, 191–200.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Cunningham, W., Uganda and its Peoples (London, 1905), 170–8;Google ScholarKaggwa, Kings, 5;Google Scholaridem, Ebika, 421; Nsimbi, Amannya, 184–5.Google Scholar For an acute though in my view only partly correct analysis see Atkinson, R. R., ‘The traditions of the early kings of Buganda: myth, history and structural analysis’, History in Africa, II (1974), 17–57.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Kaggwa, Kings, 45;Google ScholarLe Veux, Manuel, 331. The rise of the lubaale is especially associated with the reigns of Mutebi and Nakibinge, respectively two and six generations before Mawanda according to the official genealogy. The real sequence of the kings is, however, very uncertain.Google Scholar

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⁷² Kaggwa, Kings, 20.Google Scholar

⁷³ For Khambageu see Gray, R. F. in African Systems of Thought, ed. Fortes, M. and Dieterlen, G. (London, 1965), 50–61;Google Scholar for Ryangombe see de Heusch, L., Le Rwanda et la civilisation interlacustre (Brussels, 1965).Google Scholar