"The form of a sex-denoting language, by exciting sympathy even for creatures not connected with us by human fellowship, leads in the first instance to the humanization of animals, and thus especially gives rise to the creation of fables. Even on the lowest stage of national development, we find the Hottentot language accompanied by a literature of fables, for which we may vainly seek a parallel in the literatures of the prefix-pronominal languages."
[Footnote 11: See _Ursprung der Sprache_ (Weimar, 1868), pp. xix, xxiii (Introduction).]
The validity of Bleek's theory was seriously doubted by the late Dr. C.G. Büttner, in 1886, and the masses of fresh material which have come to light during the last forty years, have completely altered the aspect of the question. The Hottentot myth of the Hare and the Moon, to take but one example, which appears among the Zulus as the tale of Unkulunkulu and the Chameleon, is told by the Anyanja (of the Shire Highlands and Lake Nyasa) of the Chameleon. The Duala have the same Chameleon story; and there is a Gold Coast version, in which the two messengers are the Sheep, who linger on the way to graze, and the Goat, who arrives first with the tidings that man shall not return after death. The Kr[=u]men of the Ivory Coast say that _Nemla_ (a small antelope probably representing, if not identical with, the "Cunnie Rabbit" of Sierra Leone), maliciously, not accidentally, rendered inoperative the remedy against death provided by the fetich Blenyiba. Who is responsible for the original version it is perhaps impossible to settle. But there can be no question of _recent_ borrowing; and supposing that the Bantu did derive the myth from their predecessors (now represented by the remnant of the Bushmen, and perhaps the Pygmies), this would surely prove them at least capable of assimilating fresh ideas and thus advancing beyond the line so inexorably traced for them from the beginning. It may be remarked in passing that there seems some probability of the Bantu Anyanja in the Shire district having largely absorbed, instead of exterminating as was elsewhere the case, a smaller-sized race who previously occupied the country. In the same way, the Abatembu of the Cape Colony are the descendants of a Bantu clan amalgamated with the Bushman tribe of the 'Tambuka, and traces of similar fusion could no doubt be discovered elsewhere. But we doubt its being _necessary_ to the introduction of animal-stories into folk-lore,--or, in general, of ideas connected with the personification of nature.