have been preserved. The thunder is thus addressed: “Son of the Thunder-cloud, Thou brave loud-speaking Guru! Talk softly, please, For I have no guilt! Leave me alone (Forgive me)! For I have become quite weak (= I am quite stunned, perplexed). Thou, O Guru, Son of the Thunder-cloud!” The other incantation is addressed to the lightning. It is a dramatic performance, the lightning being played by one person, the chorus representing the appeal of the inhabitants of the kraal. _Chorus._ “Thou, Thunder-cloud’s daughter, daughter-in-law of the Fire! Thou who hast killed my brother! Therefore thou liest now so nicely in a hole! _Solo._ (Yes) indeed, I have killed thy brother so well! _Chorus._ (Well) therefore thou liest (now) in a hole. Thou who hast painted thy body red, like Goro! Thou who dost not drop the menses, Thou wife of the Copper-bodied man (the mythical ancestor of the Hottentots)!”[176.2] {177} Perhaps the sex of the lightning here may render it more amenable to the softer arts of persuasion. The Bushmen used to look steadily at the quarter whence the lightning came. They believed its object was to kill them by stealth, and that if they looked towards it they would cause the thunderbolts to turn back. It appears, they said, “to fear our eye, when it feels that we quickly look towards it.… Therefore it goes over us; it goes to sit on the ground yonder, while it does not kill us.”[177.1] In other words, they believed themselves so powerful that the lightning quailed before them and did not dare to strike. Among the Nandi, a Nilotic tribe of East Africa, it is the duty of the Toiyoi, or Thunder-clan, when a heavy thunderstorm occurs, to seize an axe and, having rubbed it in the ashes of the fire, to throw it outside the hut, crying out: “Thunder, be silent in our village!”[177.2] Among their neighbours (but not kinsfolk), the Wawanga, an old man was recently found by a government official to have stuck a curious-looking spear in an ant-hill in his village to drive off the hail.[177.3]