San Rock Art

6. Capturing the rain

104 6 Capturing the rain In 1874 Wilhelm Bleek wrote: ‘A Bushman painting will frequently help us to unearth a myth, legend, or fable, which otherwise would have been forgotten, and might have remained unrecorded.’ More than that, he found a two-way pattern of illumination and wrote that what he called San ‘mythology’ and copies of their rock paintings ‘will serve to illustrate each other’. Just such a case began to emerge when Bleek showed one of his |Xam informants a copy that Joseph Orpen had made in the Maloti Mountains. This painting shows two quadrupeds of no identifiable species (Fig. 14). A group of four men is leading one of the creatures by means of a rope attached to its nose. Just below this group two men with spears confront a second quadruped.Comparison of Orpen’s copy with what remains of the images in the rock shelter shows that the lower animal is in fact by far the larger of the two. Moreover, numerous flecks 105 of red paint, some of which are still visible on the rock face, are scattered amongst the images in Orpen’s copy; unfortunately, they were omitted when the printer prepared the copy for publication. But, all in all, we can say that the copy that Bleek showed the |Xam man was accurate enough for us to be able to accept what he had to say about it. It was on 21 June 1874 that Bleek started recording his informant’s remarks. But he seems to have been baffledbywhathewashearing.Whatcouldallthisabout attaching a rope to a ‘water cow’, the |Xam informant’s phrase, possibly mean? He broke off writing down his translation on the second page, presumably so that he and Lucy Lloyd could discuss the meaning of what they were hearing. At the point where he suspended his translation he entered a note saying that the events that the |Xam man was describing appeared to him not to be ‘literal’, adding that ‘the sense is apparently the reverse’45 – though he did not know exactly what ‘the reverse’ was. A couple of days later Bleek received Orpen’s accompanying article. It contains the explanation that his guide Qing gave for the painting. We are thus able to compare two independent explanations of the painting given by San men from different parts of southern Africa. When further copies made by George Stow of Eastern Cape and eastern Free State 106 Fig. 14. J.M. Orpen’s copy of a painting showing the capture of a ‘rainanimal ’. The objects held by the men are probably containers with aromatic herbs believed to calm the animal. The copy was made in 1873. 107 rock paintings arrived in Cape Town, Bleek’s |Xam people identified more instances of ‘water cows’. Each is in some ways unique, but they all clearly represent the same concept. In the end, these curious paintings, so baffling at first sight, came to be amongst the best attested components of San rock art. The rain and its animals The |Xam phrase that Bleek’s informant used to denote the strange painted creatures was !khwa-ka xoro. The first part of the phrase, !khwa, means both rain and water, but it is |Xam beliefs about rain that we must examine. The |Xam recognised two kinds of rain. A violent thunderstorm was said to be a‘male rain’, while gentle soaking rains were known as ‘female rain’. In the interior of southern Africa rain comes usually in the form of isolated ‘male’ thunderstorms. The San feared these storms because they sometimes blew down their flimsy shelters. Nevertheless, when they saw a thunderstorm in the far distance across the vast semi-arid interior plains, they longed for it to move in the direction of their own camp. For them, rain was life. When it fell, tubers that had lain hidden beneath the parched land sprang up, and the veld was renewed. Then antelope were attracted to the new grass and bushes. Speaking of the much desired ‘female’ rain, a|Xam man put it like this: ‘She will rain softly on the 108 ground, so that it will be wet deep down in the middle. The bushes will sprout and become nicely green, so that the springbok come galloping.’46 Rain changed the life of the San, and the connotations of the |Xam...