The rain bull of the South African Bushmen

Abstract

1. THE RAIN BULL OR COW AND RAIN-MAKING CEREMONIES In the early 1870s, J. M. Orpen copied a number of rock paintings in the Maluti Mountains of the present Lesotho. He had these paintings interpreted by his guide, a young Bushman, one of the last surviving members of the tribe residing in this area. One of these copies, reproduced by P. Vinnicombe (1976: 337) and Lewis-Williams (1977: 158) shows four persons holding a rope or thong to which an animal is attached. Qing explained: That animal which the men are catching is a snake! They are holding out charms to it, and catching it with a long rein. . (Orpen 1919: 151-52). Shortly afterwards, in 1874, this copy was shown by W. H. I. Bleek to his Bushman informant Dialkwain from the Katkop Mountains in the Cape Province. Dialkwain interpreted it as follows: The paintings from the cave Mangolong ( = Sehonghong) represent rainmaking. We see here a water thing or water cow, which is discovered by a Bushman... They then charm the animal and attach a rope to its nose, and it is shown as led by the Bushmen... (ibid., p. 155). This animal of the rock painting which by one informant is called a snakel, by the other a water cow, resembles most of all a hippopotamus!