It is hoped that the following shortstories, which the writer has endeavouredto tell in the simplest language, will givesome idea of the inner feelings andbelief of a people whose individuality is,despite the number of years we havebeen in contact with them, little knownto the large majority of us. Even amongthose well versed in the language andthe practical or legal customs of thenatives, there are few who are acquaintedwith the undercurrents of thought, andthe many traditions and superstitions,which are accepted without question bythe Zulus, and which form an essentialpart of the mental life of all among themwho have not had their ideas modified tosome extent by European teaching, andviwhich continue to have a strong holdupon the larger number even of thosewho have had the advantages of somekind of education at the hands of themissionaries and other teachers. Thecommon estimate of the African nativeis that he is a being with no ideas abovehis cattle and his physical wants; buta more intimate acquaintance with theirlife, such as the writer had from beingamongst them for many years at herfather’s mission station in Zululand, willreveal that the native has an ideal lifeof his own. This, it is true, is inmany instances of a crude and savagecharacter; yet it rises a little, if only alittle, above what is “of the earth,earthly,” and, though it may possiblyprovoke a smile on account of its crudenessor simplicity, it will at times strikea chord of sympathy as a touch of nature—asan aspiration, however feeble, topenetrate beyond the veil which hidesthe unseen world from human eyes.
viiThose who have made the folklore ofsavage or half-civilized peoples theirstudy cannot fail to be struck with thestrange analogy between some of thesuperstitions of the Zulus and those ofmany other nations. Vague and undefinedas some of their native ideas are,there is still a belief in the existence ofa spirit world around them by whichtheir lives are affected, and a gropingafter a knowledge of influences beyondhuman power, which direct the destiniesof mortal man, and of mysterious forceswhich can be brought into play bymen peculiarly gifted. In their customof sacrificing to the spirits, to inducethem to restore the health of a patient,and their belief in the powers of wizards,we find them under the thraldom of thesame superstitions which have becomefamiliar to us in so many and such diversedirections—from the ancient Greeks tothe modern spiritualists—and which haveat times played so great a part in theviiihistory of the world. Their belief in the“spirits of their fathers” watching overthem is similar to the idea underlyingChinese ancestral worship, and thewizard’s powers of killing or injuring donot differ in essentials from the so-calledspirit healing of enlightened America orthe working of the “evil eye” still believedin by the ignorant among the peasantryof Italy. If, therefore, in reading of theZ