This book is about the stories of the past which have been recorded in the kingdom of Buganda, the original nucleus of what has become the Uganda Republic. Especially it is concerned with stories of old kings, or characters who were reputed to be such; for Buganda was an intensely monarchical society and the past that interested it was mainly the dynastic past, or one that had been given a dynastic form. These stories have intrigued me, on and off, for four decades; and though they have been analysed from various points of view by a number of scholars, I believe there is still much more to be said about them.

Buganda was important to me, for it was the first African country that I got to know. It provided me with two of the best years of my life, and I have fond memories of the beauty of the land and the kindness of the people. But there are also less personal reasons for deeming its history worthy of detailed study. When it first came to the notice of literate observers, in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, it had all the appurtenances, except writing, of a state: courts, councils, armies, taxes, a complex hierarchy of ministers, provincial governors and local chiefs. That could be said of a number of other African polities, and even in East Africa, where units were generally small and loosely organised, Buganda was not the largest or most complex; that position certainly belonged to the extraordinary kingdom of Rwanda.