Twins, incest and mediators: the structure of four Zulu folk tales

Twins, incest and mediators: the structure of four Zulu folk tales

This article attempts to apply Levi-Straussian methods of myth analysis to four Zulu folk tales recorded by Callaway in the 1860s and published, with a number of other stories and fragments, with parallel English and Zulu texts. The folk tales were selected on the grounds that they all dealt with relationships within the family, and appeared to be making, at least subjectively, serious statements on matters of significance.Although they differed greatly in plot, character and locale, it transpired on analysis that all four stories contained the same deep structure. More particularly, all involved the interaction of sets of male and female twins, and all ended on the positive note of marriage. More strikingly, in each case there was a crucial episode in which sour milk was offered by the male twin to his sister, who, in each case, refused it. Also central to all the stories was the intervention of an ambiguous animal, bird or monster.It is suggested that the clue to the interpretation of this set of folk tales lies in the importance of sour milk, in all Nguni societies, as a symbol of kinship: it may be drunk only together with kin. Refusal to drink is therefore a denial of kinship (and a statement of availability for marriage). The possible meaning behind the surface structure of the tales is discussed as an attempt to reconcile the incompatibility between the (universal) drive towards incest (why else the rigid taboos?) and Nguni preoccupation with avoiding it, as expressed in the wide-ranging elaboration of Nguni exogamy rules.

Geography, Planning and Development, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous), Anthropology