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                    SOME ZULU CUSTOMS AND FOLK-LORE


                                   BY

                            L. H. SAMUELSON
                               (NOMLETI)




                                 LONDON
                      THE CHURCH PRINTING COMPANY
                     BURLEIGH STREET, STRAND, W.C.




                                PREFACE


It is hoped that the following short stories, which the writer has
endeavoured to tell in the simplest language, will give some idea of
the inner feelings and belief of a people whose individuality is,
despite the number of years we have been in contact with them, little
known to the large majority of us. Even among those well versed in the
language and the practical or legal customs of the natives, there are
few who are acquainted with the undercurrents of thought, and the many
traditions and superstitions, which are accepted without question by
the Zulus, and which form an essential part of the mental life of all
among them who have not had their ideas modified to some extent by
European teaching, and which continue to have a strong hold upon the
larger number even of those who have had the advantages of some kind of
education at the hands of the missionaries and other teachers. The
common estimate of the African native is that he is a being with no
ideas above his cattle and his physical wants; but a more intimate
acquaintance with their life, such as the writer had from being amongst
them for many years at her father's mission station in Zululand, will
reveal that the native has an ideal life of his own. This, it is true,
is in many instances of a crude and savage character; yet it rises a
little, if only a little, above what is "of the earth, earthly," and,
though it may possibly provoke a smile on account of its crudeness or
simplicity, it will at times strike a chord of sympathy as a touch of
nature--as an aspiration, however feeble, to penetrate beyond the veil
which hides the unseen world from human eyes.

Those who have made the folklore of savage or half-civilized peoples
their study cannot fail to be struck with the strange analogy between
some of the superstitions of the Zulus and those of many other nations.
Vague and undefined as some of their native ideas are, there is still a
belief in the existence of a spirit world around them by which their
lives are affected, and a groping after a knowledge of influences
beyond human power, which direct the destinies of mortal man, and of
mysterious forces which can be brought into play by men peculiarly
gifted. In their custom of sacrificing to the spirits, to induce them
to restore the health of a patient, and their belief in the powers of
wizards, we find them under the thraldom of the same superstitions
which have become familiar to us in so many and such diverse
directions--from the ancient Greeks to the modern spiritualists--and
which have at times played so great a part in the history of the world.
Their belief in the "spirits of their fathers" watching over them is
similar to the idea underlying Chinese ancestral worship, and the
wizard's powers of killing or injuring do not differ in essentials from
the so-called spirit healing of enlightened America or the working of
the "evil eye" still believed in by the ignorant among the peasantry of
Italy. If, therefore, in reading of the Zulu superstitions we are
provoked at times to smile, it must be rather at the form than at the
substance. The superstitions are the same that have ever existed, and
that, despite all our advancement, still find adherents among civilized
communities, though among these they are expressed in more delicate
language and acted upon in less savage ways. With the large mass of
Europeans such superstitions, thanks to modern enlightenment, are taken
at their true value; but so long as there are among ourselves people
who believe in planchettes, we cannot quite afford to look with
supercilious contempt upon the African who believes in wizards. And
there is one point of view in which a knowledge of what he believes is
of material importance. To him, these superstitions are realities. He
