A story told to me by an old Bushman who appears to be between 70 or 80 years of age

A story told to me by an old Bushman who appears to be between 70 or 80 years of age

Other Documents

Ink on paper

c. 1930s

Handwritten testimony on a scored, blue foolscap sheet.

Old Africaander (addresses the interviewer as 'Baas'), Bushman (the old Africaander is a), Watermeide (belief in Watermaidens), flowers (attractive), waterhole (attractive flowers spotted in a), river (a large waterhole reached by walking along the river), Waterwomen (another name for Watermeide), sister (the old Africaander's sister believed in the Waterwomen)

A story told by an old Bushman of around 70 or 80 years (unnamed). No locality or date (c. 1930s) recorded. Historically, 'Africaander' also referred to the multi-ethnic, often 'Afrikaans'/Dutch-speaking, semi-nomadic groups of southern Africa's hinterland, like the Oorlam (Dedering, 1997: 58-59). UCT's BC 151 library fonds speculatively dates this material 'c. 1930', however, 'Africaander' (one of several variant forms) had come to mean something different by the late early twentieth century, and would have been conspicuously archaic.