this, if we should accept the theory for Animal Rhymes advanced, we
would easily see why the rabbit as a messenger of a god or gods would
figure so largely in Rhyme and in story. We also would easily see how
and why as a messenger of a god he would become "Brother Rabbit." If one
will read the little Rhyme "Jaybird" he will notice that the rhymer
places the intelligence of the rabbit above his own. Our theory accounts
for this.

I would next consider the frog, but I imagine I hear the reader saying:
"That is not a beginning. How about your bear, terrapin, wolf, squirrel,
etc.?"

Seeing that I am faced by so large an array of animals, I beg the reader
to walk with me through just one more little path of thought and with
his consent I shall leave the matter there.

We see, in two of our African Rhymes, lines on a buzzard and an owl; yet
these African natives do not worship these birds. The American Negro
children of my childhood repeated Folk Rhymes concerning the rabbit, the
fox, etc., without any thought whatever of worshiping them. These
American children had received the whole through dim traditional rhymes
and stories and engaged in passing them on to others without any special
thought. The uncivilized and the unlettered hand down everything by word
of mouth. Religion, trades, superstition, medicine, sense, and nonsense
all flow in the same stream and from this stream all is drunk down
without question. If therefore the Negro's rhyme-clustering habit in
America was the same as it had ever been and the centering of rhymes
about animals is due to a former worship of them in Africa, the verses
would include not only the animals worshiped in modern Africa but in
ancient Africa. The verses would take in animals included in any
accepted African religion antedating the comparatively recent religions
found there.

The Bakuba tribe have a tradition of their origin. Quoting from Dr.
Sheppard's book again, page 114, we have the following: "From all the
information I can gather, they (the Bakuba) migrated from the far North,
crossed rivers and settled on the high table land." Here is one
tradition, standing as a guide post, with its hand pointing toward
Egypt. A one fact premise practically never forms a safe basis for a
conclusion, but when we couple this tradition with the fact that, so far
as we know, men originated in Southwest Asia and therefore probably came
into Africa by way of the Isthmus of Suez, I think the case o