Reviews. 257
the victim's body, which takes shape as a hving being.^ The big toe incident, which in Masilo et Masilonyane is combined with this motif, really belongs to the type represented in Suto and Chwana by "Kammapa and Litaolane," and found in numerous variants, — one of the most interesting being the Shambala one, where a pumpkin grows to an enormous size and swallows all the people of a district, except one woman, who afterwards gives birth to a boy. This boy, when grown up, cleaves the pumpkin with his sword and releases the people. It is found among so many different Bantu tribes, as well as some on the West Coast,^ including some with whom our acquaintance is comparatively recent, that it does not seem feasible to trace it, as some have done, to a Christian origin.
As for the ilimu {irimu, irimu), he is our old friend the Zulu or Suto cannibal {izifnu, modinid), with perhaps rather more of mon- strous and abnormal characteristics. He is known to the Duala as edimo, and just survives in Swahili folklore as zimivi, though usually Arabicized into jini. In many places his character and attributes are becoming shadowy, but with the Akikuyu, though evidently a very variable quantity (p. 315), they are tolerably distinct. A comprehensive study of the traditions concerning this being, embracing the whole Bantu field, would be well worth undertaking.
To conclude, — Mr. and Mrs. Routledge have given us a book which is of the greatest value, not only to students of Volkerkunde in general, but to all who have any practical concern with the wel- fare of our subject races. It would be beside the present purpose to enlarge on this point, but I cannot refrain from quoting a sentence or two which every colonial administrator would do well to bear in mind : —
" The present and avowed object of the East African Judiciary is to suppress native justice altogether as derogatory to the dignity of the British Courts. Even allowing for all the imperfections of
^Traces of one variant occur in "The Forty Girls," p. 324.
" Cf. Dr. George Thomann's Essai de la Manuel de la Lanque N^ouoli (Ne tribe of the Ivory Coast), Paris, 1906, p. 144 ("Za calebasse enchantie") ; also, for the toe incident, the preceding story, ^^ La jettne JUlCy La Mort, et le vanneau."
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