ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two comparatively short tales given by Qing, one of those other San people. The record of this man's words makes for an interesting comparison with the facsimile pages in the Prologue: it is more like the unsatisfactory Western summaries of exotic myths with which many folklorists and social anthropologists have to deal than the Bleek family's verbatim phonetic transcriptions. The chapter also opens up important questions about the mosaic of multiple San sources, scattered as they are through time and space. In one of the myths that the chapter considers, the eagle's assegai is an instance. Alan Barnard, for instance, found that religion is far more uniform throughout Bushman and even Khoisan southern Africa than are material aspects of culture and society. The Mantis's dispute with the eagle over, specifically, honey is part of the religious setting of Qing's narrative. Honey, of course, plays an important role in many mythologies and religions.
