A question as "You have not cleaned this
lamp?" - he says, "Yes, sah" - which means, "yes, I have not cleaned
the lamp." It does not mean a denial to your accusation; he always
uses this form, and it is liable to confuse you at first, as are
many other of the phrases, such as "I look him, I no see him "; this
means "I have been searching for the thing but have not found it";
if he really meant he had looked upon the object but had been unable
to get to it, he would say: "I look him, I no catch him," etc.
The difficulty of the language is, however, far less than the whole
set of difficulties with your own mind. Unless you can make it
pliant enough to follow the African idea step by step, however much
care you may take, you will not bag your game. I heard an account
the other day of a representative of Her Majesty in Africa who went
out for a day's antelope shooting. There were plenty of antelope
about, and he stalked them with great care; but always, just before
he got within shot of the game, they saw something and bolted.
Knowing he and the boy behind him had been making no sound and could
not have been seen, he stalked on, but always with the same result;
until happening to look round, he saw the boy behind him was
supporting the dignity of the Empire at large, and this
representative of it in particular, by steadfastly holding aloft the
consular flag. Well, if you go hunting the African idea with the
flag of your own religion or opinions floating ostentatiously over
you, you will similarly get a very poor bag.
A few hints as to your mental outfit when starting on this sport may
be useful. Before starting for West Africa, burn all your notions
about sun-myths and worship of the elemental forces. My own opinion
is you had better also burn the notion, although it is fashionable,
that human beings got their first notion of the origin of the soul
from dreams.
I went out with my mind full of the deductions of every book on
Ethnology, German or English, that I had read during fifteen years -
and being a good Cambridge person, I was particularly confident that
from Mr. Frazer's book, The Golden Bough, I had got a semi-universal
key to the underlying idea of native custom and belief. But I soon
found this was very far from being the case. His idea is a true key
to a certain quantity of facts, but in West Africa only to a limited
quantity.
I do not say, do not read Ethnology - by all means do so; and above
all things read, until you know it by heart, Primitive Culture, by
Dr. E. B. Tylor, regarding which book I may say that I have never
found a fact that flew in the face of the carefully made, broad-
minded deductions of this greatest of Ethnologists. In addition you
must know your Westermarck on Human Marriage, and your Waitz
Anthropologie, and your Topinard - not that you need expect to go
measuring people's skulls and chests as this last named authority
expects you to do, for no self-respecting person black or white
likes that sort of thing from the hands of an utter stranger, and if
you attempt it you'll get yourself disliked in West Africa. Add to
this the knowledge of all A. B. Ellis's works; Burton's Anatomy of
Melancholy; Pliny's Natural History; and as much of Aristotle as
possible. If you have a good knowledge of the Greek and Latin
classics, I think it would be an immense advantage; an advantage I
do not possess, for my classical knowledge is scrappy, and in place
of it I have a knowledge of Red Indian dogma: a dogma by the way
that seems to me much nearer the African in type than Asiatic forms
of dogma.
Armed with these instruments of observation, with a little industry
and care you should in the mill of your mind be able to make the
varied tangled rag-bag of facts that you will soon become possessed
of into a paper. And then I advise you to lay the results of your
collection before some great thinker and he will write upon it the
opinion that his greater and clearer vision makes him more fit to
form.
You may say, Why not bring home these things in their raw state?
And bring them home in a raw state you must, for purposes of
reference; but in this state they are of little use to a person
unacquainted with the conditions which surround them in their native
homes. Also very few African stories bear on one subject alone, and
they hardly ever stick to a point. Take this Fernando Po legend.
Winwood Reade (Savage Africa, p. 62) gives it, and he says he heard
it twice. I have heard it, in variants, four times - once on
Fernando Po, once in Calabar and twice in Gaboon. So it is
evidently an old story: -
"The first man called all people to one place. His name was
Raychow. 'Hear this, my people' said he, 'I am going to give a name
to every place, I am King in this River.' One day he came with his
people to the Hole of Wonga Wonga, which is a deep pit in the ground
from which fire comes at night. Men spoke to them from the Hole,
but they could not see them. Raychow said to his son, 'Go down into
the Hole' - and his son went. The son of the King of the Hole came
to him and defied him to a contest of throwing the spear.
