Note 1 — Front matter

All the stories in this book are real Fairy Tales, just as much as “Jack the Giant-Killer” or “The Sleeping Beauty.” By this I mean that they are traditional, handed down by word of mouth. Nobody knows how old they are, or who told them first. But little Kafir children sit round the fire at night and hear them from their old grandmother, and sometimes—but very very seldom—white people are allowed to hear them too. You see, the Kafirs are afraid white people would laugh at them, and so they will only begin if they are quite sure you are really interested. Even then they never like to tell the tales by daylight, for they say that if they do so a wicked spirit will cause a horn to grow out of the middle of their forehead, and they will become as ugly as an Imbula.1 Sometimes they can be persuaded, but then they always take a piece of grass and place it in their hair to ward off evil lest they be bewitched. But the best time to hear the tales is in the evening when all the work is done. Then a huge fire is made, and when all the children have played till they are tired, and sung and danced till they can remember no more songs to sing, they gather in a circle and lie upon the ground where they can best see the story-teller. And if the Kafir people were quite sure you would be interested and wouldn’t laugh, they would give you the best seat of all and let you hear the finest tales. All the Kafir children know the tales as we know ours, but not all can tell them well. When many people are there the best story-teller will be asked to come forward. Most often it is a woman with children and grandchildren of her own, whom everybody knows well. She sits in the firelight, and begins quite quietly. But soon she gets excited, and before long she acts the whole story before you. She does it so well that if I were to tell you just the name of the story you could follow it without knowing a word of the language. One favourite tale is that which we have called “The Beauty and the Beast,” and there are ever so many different versions of this story. Other well-known ones are “Nya-nya Bulembu,” “The Fairy Frog,” and “The Fairy Bird.”