The few words given as "African" by Mr. Jekyll seem to be traceable to Tshi. "Massoo" (pp. 12, 13) is _mã so_ = to lift. _Afu_ ("hafoo," "afoo," p. 18) is not in Christaller's _Dictionary_, except as equivalent to "grass," or "herbs"; _fufu_ is a food made from yams or plantains boiled and pounded; perhaps there is some slight confusion. _Nyam_ is not "to eat," but _enãm_ is Tshi for "meat," as _nyama_ (in some form or other) is in every Bantu language. The nonsense-words in the songs may be corrupted from Tshi or some cognate language, but a fuller knowledge of these than I possess would be necessary in order to determine the point.
Transplanted African folk-lore has a peculiar interest of its own, and one is very glad to find Mr. Jekyll doing for Jamaica what Mr. Chandler Harris, _e.g._ has done for Georgia. But the African element in the stories before us is far less evident than in "Uncle Remus," and is in many cases overlaid and inextricably mixed up with matter of European origin. At least eleven out of the fifty-one stories before us can be set down as imported, directly or indirectly, from Europe. I say directly or indirectly, because an examination of Chatelain's _Folk-tales of Angola_ and Junod's _Chants et Contes des Baronga_ shows that some tales, at any rate, have passed from Portugal to Africa. Such are _La fille du Roi_ (Ronga), which is identical with Grimm's _The Shoes that were danced to pieces_, and with the Slovak-gypsy story of _The Three Girls_ (Groome, _Gypsy Folk-tales_, p. 141). But in the absence of more detailed and direct evidence than we yet possess, it would be rash to assume that they have passed to America by way of Africa, rather than that they have been independently transmitted.
The eleven stories above referred to are: II. Yung-kyum-pyung, III. King Daniel, VI. Blackbird and Woss-woss, X. Mr. Bluebeard, XVII. Man-crow, XVIII. Saylan, XXI. Tacoma and the Old-witch Girl, XXVI. The Three Pigs, XXXI. Pretty Poll (another version of III.), XXXIX. Open Sesame (variant of VI.), VII. The Three Sisters. But some of these, as I hope to show presently, also have genuine African prototypes, and it is a question how far these fading traditions have been amalgamated with fairy-tales told to the slaves by the children of their European masters. The last named is one of a small group of tales (VII., XXIV., XXXIV., L.) which I cannot help referring to a common African original.