“A certain man had a most beautiful daughter who was beset by many suitors.  But as soon as they were told that the sole condition on which they could obtain her was to bale out a brook with a ground-nut shell (which is about half the size of a walnut shell), they always walked away in disappointment.  However, at last one took heart of grace, and began the task.  He obtained the beauty; for the father said, ’Kam ago tsuru baditsia tsido—­he who undertakes whatever he says, will do it.’”

PROVERBS ABOUT WOMEN

The last two tales I have cited were gathered among the Bornu people in the Soudan.  In Burton’s Wit and Wisdom from West Africa we find a few proverbs about women that are current in the same region.

“If a woman speaks two words, take one and leave the other.”  “Whatever be thy intimacy, never give thy heart to a woman.”  “If thou givest thy heart to a woman, she will kill thee.”  “If a man tells his secrets to his wife, she will bring him into the way of Satan.”  “A woman never brings a man into the right way.”  “Men who listen to what women say, are counted as women.”

It is significant that in the four hundred and fifty-five pages of Burton’s book, which includes over four hundred proverbs and tales, there are only half a dozen brief references to women, and those are sneers.

AFRICAN AMAZONS

As I have had occasion to remark before, African women lack the finer feminine qualities, both bodily and mental, wherefore even if an African man were able to feel sentimental love he could not find an object to bestow it on.  An incident related by Du Chaillu (Ashango Land, 187) illustrates the martial side of African femininity.  A married man named Mayolo had called another man’s wife toward him.  His own wife, hearing of this, got jealous, told him the other must be his sweetheart, and rushed out to seek her rival.  A battle ensued: 

“Women’s fights in this country always begin by their throwing off their dengui—­that is, stripping themselves entirely naked.  The challenger having thus denuded herself, her enemy showed pluck and answered the challenge by promptly doing the same; so that the two elegant figures immediately went at it literally tooth and nail, for they fought like cats, and between the rounds reviled each other in language the most filthy that could possibly be uttered.  Mayolo being asleep in his house, and no one seeming ready to interfere, I went myself and separated the two furies.”

In Dahomey, as everybody knows, the bellicose possibilities of the African woman have been utilized in forming bands of Amazons which are described as “the flower of the army.”  They are made up of female captives and other women, wear special uniforms, and in battle are credited with even greater ferocity