.... It is perfectly clear that the cannibals
of the Zulu legends are not common men; they are magnified
into giants and magicians; they are remarkably swift and
enduring; fierce and terrible warriors." Very probably they
may have a mythical origin in modes of thought akin to those
which begot the Panis of the Veda and the Northern Trolls. The
parallelism is perhaps the most remarkable one which can be
found in comparing barbaric with Aryan folk-lore. Like the
Panis and Trolls, the cannibals are represented as the foes of
the solar hero Uthlakanyana, who is almost as great a
traveller as Odysseus, and whose presence of mind amid trying
circumstances is not to be surpassed by that of the
incomparable Boots. Uthlakanyana is as precocious as Herakles
or Hermes. He speaks before he is born, and no sooner has he
entered the world than he begins to outwit other people and
get possession of their property. He works bitter ruin for the
cannibals, who, with all their strength and fleetness, are no
better endowed with quick wit than the Trolls, whom Boots
invariably victimizes. On one of his journeys, Uthlakanyana
fell in with a cannibal. Their greetings were cordial enough,
and they ate a bit of leopard together, and began to build a
house, and killed a couple of cows, but the cannibal's cow was
lean, while Uthlakanyana's was fat.
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