AFRK AN NATIVE MELODIES. 625 



gieat favourite, The first half easily adapts itself to Christian 

 use. thus : 



l he corn goes home : The souls go home : Great is the har- 

 vest ; The Chief will l)e there at the Feast : and will give His 



wages 



Needless to say, the hnal words have to be altered. Per- 

 sonally, I think it a great pity that English hymn-tunes and 

 translations of English hymns have been used for the natives. 

 Both are often very poor, and the tunes entirely unsuital)le in 

 rhythm. The dit^culty of unsuitable association is readilv got 

 over by giving Basuto a Swahili melody, and "c'ice versa, and so 

 on. If we were squeamish about origins or forgotten associa- 

 tions, we sliould miss some very fine folk-melodies, which 

 appear as modern English hymn-tunes. 



r Ism r iTl, 



12. E . . 1 . . Uciia nana (or ngoana) E . . I . . Baby: 



ken pcpile : E . . I . . I have carried you. 



ka lithatsana In the little lithari. 



tsa-boiinuae Of your mothers. 



There is something very touching in this lullaby. It is long, 

 very long, since I was sung to sleep Avith : 



" Rockaby baby on the tree top : 

 When the wind blows the cradle will rock," 



but I seem to recognise the same tossing lilt in both. The 

 native mother is, after all, radicall\ of the same stock as the 

 European, but with a difference, at any rate in externals. Thus 

 pepa is to carry on the back in the tliari, or sheepskin. The 

 song seems to represent the rocking and tossing the child must 

 get, as the mother raises and lowers her hoe at the field work. 



I should say that I am beholden to Dr. Frere, of Mirfield, 

 a distinguished European scholar and musician, who was good 

 enough to record Nos. 5, 4, 12, and 16 for me when on a visit 

 once to ?\lodderpoort. 



(1) s PI r d 1 1 m rd r 



13 (Se)phoko se linaka, thaka tsa me . . kuankuantsilo' ! ho 



S S PI 

 ntsoe mane ! 



The horned owl, my mate let 



it out over there. 



Whether the word untranslated represents the owl's hoot, 

 or is a name, I cannot tell: the piece is a leiigac. Maiigac ipl.) 

 are odes sung in the intervals of the litJioko, the praises acclaim- 

 ing a chief. Some of these are of real poetic value, but do not 

 concern us here, as ( anciently, at any rate) they were not sung, 

 but recited. The tuangac are, as it were, the choruses of a 

 Greek play, or rather the lyrics which give variety to an epic 



