The Nandi: Their Language and Folk-Lore

Mr. Hollis's book on the Masai was one of the most noteworthy contributions to ethnography which have appeared in this country during the last ten years, and its successor, The Nandi, is in some respects still more remarkable. Very little has hitherto been known of the non-Bantu peoples in the northern part of the East Africa Protectorate; Mr. Hollis's study marks a distinct advance in this direction, and we hope that he will be enabled to follow it up by similar accounts of the Suk and Turkana, perhaps also the Gang (Acholi) and Bari. The Nandi are, like the Masai, herdsmen and warriors, though they have of late years become cultivators after a fashion. Their language is allied to that of the Dorobo -- or rather, the Dorobo speak a dialect of Nandi, a fact which, as Sir Charles Eliot points out (Introduction, p. xiv), is somewhat perplexing, in view of the fact that they do not appear to be racially akin. The Masai and the Nandi agree in supposing the Dorobo to have existed upon earth from the beginning of things. The theory that the latter borrowed the Nandi language also has its difficulties, as there are no Nandi in the country principally occupied by the Dorobo. The most probable solution, according to the same authority, is to suppose that the Nandi formerly extended further east and south, or the Dorobo further west, so that the two peoples were in touch, and that a wedge was driven between them by the Masai invasion from the north. The Nandi language is sufficiently different from the Masai to deserve a separate study. We are not aware that anything has been done for it hitherto beyond the vocabulary published by Sir Harry Johnston in his Uganda Protectorate, and Professor Meinhof's study of Dorobo in the Transactions of the Berlin Oriental Seminary for 1907. The very full English-Nandi vocabulary collected by Mr. Hollis, the list of trees, grasses, &c., and the texts with literal interlinear translation, are all most valuable. The list of clans and totems on p. 5 is an item of unusual interest, together with the section on sacred animals and the tabus observed by each clan. The Nandi still consider it wrong to kill their totem-animals, but the ancient rigor of the prohibition is somewhat relaxed and in many cases a formal apology is considered sufficient. Though Mr. Hollis does not mention the belief in the totem as actual ancestor of the clan, he relates a curious story indicating a strong consciousness of relationship with it. A Nandi of the bee totem (the Kipkenda clan) happened to pass by when Mr. Hollis and his followers had been driven from their camping-place by an angry swarm of bees, and volunteered to quiet them. "He was practically stark naked, but " he started off at once to the spot where the loads were, whistling loudly in much the same way as the Nandi whistle to their cattle. We saw the bees swarm round and on him, but beyond brushing them lightly from his arms he took no notice of them, and, still whistling loudly, proceeded to the tree in which was their hive. In a few minutes he returned, none the worse for his venture, and we were able to " fetch our loads...".. --Man, Vol. 8