“I have given to Hlabakoane, Kumonngoe,[126] To the herd of our cattle Kumonngoe I thought our cattle were going to stay in the kraal, Kumonngoe, And so I gave him my father’s Kumonngoe.” [126] The girl had a brother named Hlabakoane, to whom she had given a magical food, called Kumonngoe, that belonged to her father and that the girl had been forbidden to touch. E. Jacottet, The Treasury of Basuto Lore, Vol. 1, (1908), p. 114. In an Omaha tale[127] of a Snake-Man it is related that a man flees from a serpent. Three helpers in succession give him moccasins which, on the following morning return of their own accord to their owners, and every time the same conversation is repeated. When the serpent goes in pursuit it asks every animal for information in exactly the same words. In a tradition of the Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island the same formula is repeated forty times together with the description of the same ceremonial. In the tales of the Pueblo Indians the same incident is repeated four times as happening to four sisters; the yellow, red, blue, and white girls. In a Siberian tale of the Hare we hear that a hunter hides under the branches of a fallen willow tree. One hare after another appears in order to browse, espies the hunter and runs away. In a Papua tale from New Guinea the birds come one after another and try to peck open the stomach of a drowned person so as to let run out the water that he has swallowed. Still more markedly appears this type of repetition in a tale from New Ireland. The birds try to throw the casuary off from the branch of a tree on which he is perched. In order to accomplish this, one after another alights on the same branch next to the casuary but nearer the trunk. Thus he is compelled to move out farther and farther until finally he drops down. [127] James Owen Dorsey, The Thegiha Language, Contributions to North American Ethnology, Vol. VI, (1890), Washington D. C., p. 284. Much more striking are the rhythmic repetitions in songs. Polynesian genealogies offer an excellent example. Thus we find in Hawaii the following song:[128] Lii-ku-honua, the man, Ola-ku-honua, the woman, Kumo-honua, the man, Lalo-honua, the woman, and so on through sixteen pairs. [128] Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folk-lore. Mem. Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Vol. VI, Honolulu, (1919), p. 365. Or in a cradlesong of the Kwakiutl Indians:[129] “When I am a man, then I shall be a hunter, o father! ya ha ha ha. When I am a man, then I shall be a harpooneer, o father! ya ha ha ha. When I am a man, then I shall be a canoe-builder, o father! ya ha ha ha. When I am a man, then I shall be a carpenter, o father! ya ha ha ha. When I am a man, then I shall be an artisan, o father! ya ha ha ha. That we may not be in want, o father, ya ha ha ha.” [129] Franz Boas, Ethnology of the Kwakiutl, 35th An. Rep. Bur. Am. Ethn., Washington, 1921, p. 1310.