Hausa Superstitions and Customs: an Introduction to the Folklore and the Folk

Abstract

IN this hook Major Tremearne has provided students of folklore with a feast of tales from Northern Nigeria, and it may be said at once that the material is arranged in such a way as to enable the reader to deduce from the tales themselves a very fair picture of the ethnography of the people amongst whom they were collected. The main portion of the hook consists of one hundred stories, each of which is accompanied when necessary by a note on the local variants and on parallel tales in other parts of the world. The stories are preceded by a chapter in which they are analysed, and which contains all that can he deduced from them relative to the manners and customs, the mode of thought, and the beliefs of the Hausa, together with many explanatory passages drawn from the author's own experience and reading. They are followed by notes which explain separate words or incidents in each tale, the existence of each note in a particular story being indicated by a number inserted in the text. The book concludes with two short chapters, on tribal marks and on the Bori dance respectively.

Hausa Superstitions and Customs: an Introduction to the Folklore and the Folk.

By Major A. J. N. Tremearne. Pp. xv + 548 + plates + map. (London: John Bale, Sons, and Daniellson, Ltd., 1913.) Price 21s. net.