A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.
Overview
The #Nerru is an early-race person who marries a human husband; the edition explains that she is now a bird. They collect the food translated as Bushman rice together. He digs with a stick, standing inside the mouth of a hole, while she stands above holding the bag. He repeatedly adds further finds until the bag is full. Wanting to carry more, he demands her small skin covering. She gently refuses, explaining that her household does not put earthy food into the covering worn on the back, and proposes putting the extra food into the ground and covering it instead.
He repeats his demand and forcibly snatches the skin away. The entrails it supports fall down. The narrator explicitly admits that he does not understand their position on the skin well: he is preserving what others told him. The husband cries out in distress, asking what he should do. His wife rises and walks toward her mother’s home, replacing her entrails while singing the household’s objection. She remains active and capable of speech after the injury; the account does not treat her as a corpse restored from death.
Her mother recognizes the sound of a person singing from the direction where her daughter went to collect food. She asks another daughter to look, then runs to meet the injured woman. Taking a new springbok skin that she had kept unused, she places the exposed entrails upon it and binds her daughter with its four straps, formed from the animal’s legs. She slowly escorts her into the hut. Angry at the husband’s failure to understand, she refuses his attempt to approach his wife and sends him back to his own people. The #Nerru household continues dwelling there; reunion with the husband is not the ending.
The adjacent description gives the bird a very short bill, black male plumage and white female plumage compared with male and female ostriches. It feeds by picking small-bird food from the ground and builds grass nests beside the root of a bush. Outside breeding it occurs in large numbers. These are the contributor’s recorded bird comparisons, alongside the former-person account; they do not by themselves establish a modern species identification. A transmission note tentatively reaches through several generations of |xabbi-an’s female ancestry, without securely naming the distant storyteller.
Origins & earliest records
Bleek and Lloyd, Specimens of Bushman Folklore (1911), V.—70, The #Nerru and Her Husband and adjacent bird description, complete pp. 206–215. Heading credits June 1879 |han#kass’o dictation from his mother |xabbi-an; the longer female ancestral transmission is explicitly tentative.
Records & interpretation
Complete bilingual-edition narrative, explanatory notes and bird description read through the nest/nonbreeding conclusion on p. 215. Named main contributor and maternal source are secure heading evidence; remote ancestry and the position of entrails remain qualified by the narrator. Both restoration and permanent husband departure are retained.
In the literature
“she slowly conducted her daughter home;”
V.—70, The #Nerru and Her Husband; complete pp. 206–213 and all notes; excerpt printed p. 213 · Bleek–Lloyd original English translation; Lucy C. Lloyd, editor
A husband insists on placing gathered rice on his wife’s back kaross against her prohibition, then snatches the covering and exposes her entrails. She replaces them and slowly returns home. Her mother covers and binds her, conducts her home and sends the husband back to his people. The woman remains alive; the ending does not narrate her destruction.
“which they pick up on the ground.”
V.—70, The #Nerru, as a Bird; complete pp. 213–215; excerpt printed p. 213 · Bleek–Lloyd original English translation; Lucy C. Lloyd, editor
Adjacent bird observations describe short bills, black males and white females compared with ostrich plumage, ground feeding, grass nests at bush roots, and larger gatherings outside breeding. These observations do not themselves narrate a transformation or establish a modern species identification.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Specimens of Bushman Folklore — The #Nerru and Her Husband; The #Nerru, as a Bird
Historical title retained for bibliographic identification; two adjacent accounts treated as one profile.
- 02
Specimens of Bushman Folklore: original bilingual edition
V.—70, whole pp. 206–215; June 1879 main heading, maternal credit, tentative remote ancestry and adjacent bird observations.
- 03
Specimens of Bushman Folklore — V.—70, The #Nerru and Her Husband; complete pp. 206–213 and all notes
London: George Allen & Company, 1911; original bilingual edition. Title-page OCR and live UNC/Internet Archive catalogue agree. Printed pages distinguished from manuscript marginal numbers and access-image indices.
Family, evolution & connections
Springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis)
The translated #Nerru narrative describes her mother fastening a fresh skin covering around the exposed entrails, with a note identifying its four straps as the springbok’s legs. Animal Diversity Web supplies the zoological referent for springbok. The connection concerns an animal material used in a supernatural restoration story, not an experimentally supported medical effect, and the tentative identification of an earlier carrying sack remains separate.
Unnamed mother of #Nerru
The narrative repeatedly identifies the woman who hears #Nerru’s distressed song and repairs her covering as her mother. She then rejects the husband’s return and directs him to his own people. The mother is not individually named in this passage. This is explicit story-level kinship, kept distinct from the edition’s tentative note about the extended family through which the account may have been transmitted.
Located primary passages
Specific passages supporting details in this entry, grouped by their published witness.
Specimens of Bushman Folklore: original bilingual edition
London: George Allen & Company, 1911; original bilingual edition. Title-page OCR and live UNC/Internet Archive catalogue agree. Printed pages distinguished from manuscript marginal numbers and access-image indices.
- A husband insists on placing gathered rice on his wife’s back kaross against her prohibition, then snatches the covering and exposes her entrails. She replaces them and slowly returns home. Her mother covers and binds her, conducts her home and sends the husband back to his people. The woman remains alive; the ending does not narrate her destruction.
V.—70, The #Nerru and Her Husband; complete pp. 206–213 and all notes
- Adjacent bird observations describe short bills, black males and white females compared with ostrich plumage, ground feeding, grass nests at bush roots, and larger gatherings outside breeding. These observations do not themselves narrate a transformation or establish a modern species identification.
No entire volume or independent performance/manuscript archive read. Bilingual original retained, but no independent |Xam translation claimed. OCR name glyphs unreliable; contributor headings checked visually. No lyrics, prayers, formulas or practical treatment copied.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary collected narrative translationThe #Nerru and Her HusbandResearch access: 2026-10-05
- Primary collected accountThe #Nerru, as a BirdResearch access: 2026-10-05
- Primary collected bilingual narrative and contributor observationsOriginal 1911 edition: #Nerru narrative and bird descriptionResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.