These Bantu folk-tales are sometimes contemptuously dismissed as pointless and inane; and so, perhaps, they are, in translation, for it requires great skill in the language and knowledge of native ways to translate them intelligently, even when they are fairly well told. So much has to be supplied, or explained, which, in the original, is simply taken for granted, or has to be gathered from gesture and intonation. But though their literary value may be small, they are always instructive as a picture of native manners and ideas, which they illustrate by many little graphic touches. Besides, they furnish a kind of mental training to the people themselves. I have no hesitation in introducing here a quotation from M. Junod, because, though he is speaking of the Delagoa Bay natives, it will also apply to other Bantu tribes. ‘Every young man, every girl, knows one or two tales which he or she is always willing to repeat. Sometimes, even, they are expected to amuse the company with a story, told by way of forfeit, when they are the losers in a game. Beginners often get confused and break down. They mix up the incidents, or lose the thread of the narrative. “That is too much for you!” (literally, “that has overcome you,”) says the audience, and a more skilled reciter then takes the stage. Next time, the novice will acquit himself better. Besides, when the young people have come to an end of all they know, there remain the old women, who are the real repositories of tradition. Some of them know ten, twenty, or thirty tales, and I know more than one who could go on the whole evening, every day for a fortnight, without completely exhausting her stock.... Children exercise their memory in this way, and accustom themselves to speak in public; and it is perhaps to this custom that the South African races owe their extreme facility in expressing themselves.’[29] CHAPTER XI TRIBAL ORGANISATION, GOVERNMENT, ETC. Totemistic clans. Kinship counted through women. The paramount chief: his powers. Succession to the chieftainship. Administration of justice. Crime and punishment. Slavery.