[Gutenberg 46501] • Some Zulu Customs and Folk-lore

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 vi 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.