''Specimens of Bushman Folklore'' is a book by the

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

Wilhelm H. I. Bleek and Lucy C. Lloyd, which was published in 1911. The book records eighty-seven legends, myths and other

traditional stories Traditional stories, or narrative, stories about traditions, differ from both fiction and nonfiction in that the importance of transmitting the story's worldview is generally understood to transcend an immediate need to establish its categorization ...

of the ǀXam

Bushmen The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are the members of any of the indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures of southern Africa, and the Indigenous peoples of Africa, oldest surviving cultures of the region. They are thought to have diverged fro ...

in their now-extinct language. The stories were collected through interviews with various narrators, chief among them ǀA!kunta, ǁKabbo, Diäǃkwain, !Kweiten-ta-ǀǀKen and ǀHanǂkasso. These tales were written down and translated by Bleek and his sister-in-law Lloyd. Bleek died in 1875, but Lloyd continued transcribing ǀXam narratives after his death. It is thanks to her efforts that some of the narratives were eventually published in this book, which also includes sketches of

rock art In archaeology, rock arts are human-made markings placed on natural surfaces, typically vertical stone surfaces. A high proportion of surviving historic and prehistoric rock art is found in caves or partly enclosed rock shelters; this type al ...

attributed to the Bushmen people and some ǃXun narratives. ''Specimens of Bushman Folklore'' has been considered the cornerstone of study of the Bushmen and their religious beliefs. Laurens van der Post describes the book (and

Dorothea Bleek Dorothea Frances Bleek (later Dorothy F. Bleek; born 26 March 1873, Mowbray, Cape Town – died 27 June 1948, Newlands, Cape Town) was a South African-born German anthropologist and philologist known for her research on the Bushmen (the San peo ...

's ''Mantis and His Friend'') as "a sort of

Stone Age The Stone Age was a broad prehistory, prehistoric period during which Rock (geology), stone was widely used to make stone tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years and ended b ...

Bible" in the introduction to ''The Heart of the Hunter'' (1961), a follow-up to ''The Lost World of the Kalahari''. ''Specimens of Bushman Folklore'', as well as the situation of the Bushmen during their disappearance in South Africa and the lives of Bleek and Lloyd, have been covered in a Dutch documentary series called ''The Broken String''. The Book was considered by

Elias Canetti Elias Canetti (; 25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994; ; ) was a German-language writer, known as a Literary modernism, modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and nonfiction writer. Born in Ruse, Bulgaria, to a Sephardi Jews, Sephardic Jewish fam ...

as "the most important book in his possession", and in his Notes from Hampstead he writes about finding in Cesare Pavese diaries that he shared this interest with him.

External links

''Specimens of Bushman Folklore.''
(entire text)
''Specimens of Bushman Folklore.''
(scanned pages, with search)
Diä!kwain, the 'soft-hearted' prisoner
(an informant)
/Xam (Bushmen and Bushwomen) Intellectuals (1845-1879)
including the five informants of Bleek

(entry under ''1911'')
University of Cape Town, Michaelis School of Fine Art: The Digital Bleek and Lloyddocumentary information (in Dutch)
1911 books Anthropology books Books about folklore {{Africa-myth-stub

Further reading

External links