YUMBOES

Little fairy folk

The Yumboes are supernatural beings of West African folklore, associated with the Wolof people of Senegal and with the Cape Verde peninsula. They are also named Bakhna Rakhna, literally the good people. Tradition describes them as small creatures about two feet tall, with pearly white skin and sometimes silver hair. They are said to live beneath the hills of the Paps, near Dakar, to come out and dance in the moonlight, and to lay great banquets served by invisible attendants of whom only the hands and feet can be seen. They feed on maize stolen from humans and on fish they catch themselves, and sometimes invite travellers and strangers to their feasts. The known source of this legend is The Fairy Mythology by the folklorist Thomas Keightley, published in 1828, which reports the testimony of a woman who had lived as a child on the island of Gorée, off Senegal. Keightley already noted the resemblance of the Yumboes to European fairies. Because of this single, ancient source, the documentation remains thin, but the Yumboes count among the rare fairy traditions of West Africa ever set down in writing.