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The/Xam folklore recorded by Dr WHI Bleek and his sister-in-law, Miss LC Lloyd, in the 1870s and 1880s was written down during interviews in Cape Town. The informants were a few of the scores of/Xam who had been sent as prisoners to work on the Breakwater (mostly as a result of stock theft), and others came at the request of friends and relatives to stay at the Bleek home. The recorders never had the opportunity to visit the northern Karoo where their informants lived. When Bleek's daughter, Dorothea, went to Prieska and Kenhardt in 1910, she met only Mikki Streep in Kenhardt (Bleek 1936b).

Information on the/Xam informants and their relatives and friends was published by Bleek (1873, 1875), Lloyd (1889), Bleek and Bleek (1909), Bleek and Lloyd (1911), Bleek (1931, 1932, 1933, 1935, 1936a) and Lewis-• Williams (1981), and is drawn together in this paper with the aid of a sketch map and genealogies in …