“Now The Yard is Crawling with Bushman Stories:” A Comparison between Thematically Related |xam Folkloric Texts from the Bleek and Lloyd (1911) and Von Wielligh (1919–1921) Collections in Relation to Accusations of Plagiarism

Despite the potential value of the |xam folklore recorded by the Afrikaans land surveyor and author Gideon R. von Wielligh during the late 1800s, his work has predominantly been dismissed as unscientific and unreliable. In contrast, the archive of German linguist Wilhelm H. I. Bleek and his English sister-in-law, Lucy C. Lloyd, enjoys a great deal of attention from a wide array of disciplines. Sigrid Schmidt goes so far as to argue that Von Wielligh’s recordings are merely plagiarised versions of Bleek and Lloyd texts, and identifies various narratives where there are thematic similarities between the two archives to support this claim. This article illustrates the importance of Von Wielligh’s recordings through a comparative close reading of two central texts from the Von Wielligh and Bleek and Lloyd collections, which Schmidt identified as sharing enough similarity to warrant being described as plagiarism. This close reading hinges on the concept of “nuggets,” as proposed by David Lewis-Williams in the study of |xam narrative. Furthermore, this close reading is positioned within the broader frame of holographic archaeology, which is a methodological frame I conceived in an earlier piece to validate the linguistic data in the Von Wielligh collection. Seeing that the |xam folkloric material at our disposal is already sparse, I hope to highlight through this comparative reading the relevance of all recorded material—and not simply that of Bleek and Lloyd—in an effort to derive more understanding of and enjoyment from |xam heritage texts.