The Yumboes are the fairy-folk of West Africa — small, benevolent, pale-skinned spirits of the lore of the Wolof people of Senegal, who dwell beneath the hills, feast and dance by moonlight, and are known with affectionate respect as the “good people.” Among the most charming of all West African spirits, and famous as one of the few African fairy-traditions recorded in the wider world’s fairy-lore, the Yumboes are the dancing, feasting little folk of the Senegalese night.
The Good People of Senegal
The Yumboes (also called the Bakhna Rakhna, “the good people”) belong to the folklore of the Wolof of Senegal, and especially to the lore of the Goree region near Cape Verde. They are described as small spirits — about two feet high — with pearly or silvery skin and white hair, in this resembling the fairy-folk of European tradition (with whom they were compared by the nineteenth-century collectors who recorded them, in works such as Keightley’s Fairy Mythology). They dwell beneath the hills — the Paps, the hills near Goree, were said to be their home — in unseen subterranean halls, and they come out by night to revel beneath the moon.
Feasting and Dancing by Moonlight
The Yumboes are famous above all for their moonlit feasts and dances. By night they emerge from their hills to dance in the moonlight, to feast, and to make merry — and, in the manner of fairy-folk the world over, they are said to invite (or to help themselves to) the food and hospitality of mortals. They were believed to take corn and fish from the people, and to feast in their halls beneath the hills, served by attendant spirits; and they would sometimes invite favoured humans to join their revels. Like the fairies of Europe and the spirit-folk of many traditions, they occupy the enchanting borderland between the human world and the world of spirits — small, hidden, merry, and to be treated with respect and a little caution.
The African Fairies
The Yumboes hold a special place as one of the best-known African fairy-traditions in the wider world’s lore of the little people — recorded by collectors of fairy-mythology and often cited alongside the elves, brownies, and fairies of Europe as evidence of the universality of the belief in small, hidden, benevolent (yet capricious) spirit-folk. Yet they are wholly a being of West African tradition, the good people of the Wolof, the dwellers beneath the Senegalese hills. In them the folklore of West Africa gave its own charming form to the dancing, feasting little folk of the moonlit night.
Legacy
The Yumboes endure as the fairy-folk of West Africa — the small, pale, benevolent “good people” of the Wolof of Senegal, who dwell beneath the hills and feast and dance by moonlight. In them West African folklore gave its own delightful form to the universal little people of the world’s fairy-traditions, and earned a lasting place in the wider lore of the fairies. As the moonlit revellers beneath the Senegalese hills, the Yumboes remain among the most charming of all the spirits of West Africa.