human
It is not twenty years since the piercing shrieks and supplications for help, of a passage boat's company, which had been landed on a sandbank at low water, in the Solway Firth, instead of on the Cumberland coast, and who found, as the moon rose and the haze dispersed, that they were in mid-channel, with a strong tide setting fast in upon them, were mistaken by the people, both on the Scotch and English shores, for the wailings of Kelpies! The consequence was that the unhappy people (whose boat had drifted from them before their fatal error was discovered) were drowned; though nothing had been easier, but for the rooted superstition of their neighbours ashore, than to have effectually succoured them.
gpt
This propensity to attribute natural effects to supernatural causes is one of the best known and least intelligible phenomena of the human mind. We are always rejecting the evidence of our senses, to tamper with the imaginary evidence supplied by analogous reasoning upon mere abstract principles. The good wife never dreamed of referring her alarms to the natural objects around her. A humming drone, at twilight by the waters, a rustling in the leaves of the trees about her cottage--if these did not bespeak the presence of the devil, what the d----l else could they indicate? Thus our poet proceeds to tell us that beyond the same loch, he himself had a visible encounter with something LIKE, indeed, to a _bunch of rushes_, waving and shaking in the wind; and after an admirable description of the emotions of fear, by which he was oppressed, he incidentally mentions that the Great Unknown did certainly, with an abrupt and hasty flight, take away like a drake; but even the appropriate note of the fluttering fowl never once awakened his suspicion that it might be the fowl proper and not the foul fiend!
human
Journey to Ashango-land, relates a singular legend, believed in by the natives of Aviia, respecting a series of rapids and a singularly picturesque waterfall which he discovered on the river Ngouyai, and which bears some resemblance to the popular legend about Wayland Smith and to those already referred to. He says:--
gpt
Like all other remarkable natural objects, the falls of the Ngouyai, have given rise, in the fertile imaginations of the negroes, to mythical stories. The legend runs that the main falls are the work of the spirit Fougamou, who resides there, and who was _in old times_ a mighty forger of iron; but the rapids above are presided over by Nagoshi, the wife of Samba, who has spoiled this part of the river in order to prevent people from ascending and descending. The falls to which the name Samba is given lie a good day's journey below the Fougamou, but, from the description of the natives, I concluded they were only rapids like the Nagoshi above. The Fougamou is the only great fall of water. It takes its name from the spirit (mbuiri) who is said to have made it, and who watches it constantly, wandering night and day round the falls. A legend on this subject was related to us with great animation by our Aviia guide, to the following effect: In former times people used to go to the falls, deposit iron and charcoal on the river side and say, 'Oh! mighty Fougamou, I want this iron to be worked into a knife or hatchet,' (or whatever implement it might be), and, in the morning, when they went to the place, they found the weapon finished. One day, however, a man and his son went with their iron and charcoal, and had the impertinent curiosity to wait and see how it was done. They hid themselves,--the father, in the hollow of a tree, and the son, amongst the boughs of another tree. Fougamou came with his son and began to work, when suddenly the son said, 'Father, I smell the smell of people!' The father replied, 'Of course you smell people, for does not the iron and charcoal come from the hands of people?' So they worked on. But the son again interrupted his father, repeating the same words, and then Fougamou looked round and saw the two men. He roared with rage, and, to punish the father and son, he turned the tree in which the father was hidden into an ant-hill, and the hiding place of the son into a nest of black ants. Since then Fougamou has not worked iron for the people any more.
human
I was much amused by the story one of the men related about the dry and wet seasons. The remarkable dryness of the present season had been talked over a good deal, and it was this conversation which led to the story. As usual with the African, the two seasons were personified, _Nchanga_, being the name of the wet, and _Enomo_ that of the dry season. One day, the story went, Nchanga and Enomo had a great dispute as to which was the older, and they came at last to lay a wager on the question, which was to be decided in an assembly of the people of the air or sky. Nchanga said, 'When I come to a place rain comes.' Enomo retorted, 'When I make my appearance the rains goes.' The people of the air all listened, and, when the two disputants had ceased, they exclaimed, 'Verily, verily, we cannot tell which is the eldest, you must be both of the same age.'