3l6 SESUTO SONGS AND MUSIC. 



among the Zulus also the remark that they dressed like women 

 but fought like men. This is the more interesting, as the Bantu 

 have perhaps more in common, ethnologically, with the 

 primitive Caledonian reindeer hunter than with most European 

 races, so much so that one almost wonders if some members 

 of that sturdy race, instead of going north to Scandinavia and 

 Scotland, did not cross from France to Spain and to Africa, 

 and meet some Eastern race in Central Africa. This would 

 explain the Scotch scale in our sub-continent and other points 

 which I must reserve. 



Two other Suto songs in the Scotch scale we have adapted 

 to Christian words, and vise as harvest hymns. I should like 

 to see this practice extended, but obviously great care is re- 

 quired. One of these songs is a threshing song about going 

 home with the kafircorn, the other a child's verse about the 

 patron gnome of children. 



One important exception I must make to Suto pentatonic 

 tunes, if a lady in Maseru has supplied me with the true notes 

 of the greeting of the Bale or circumcision girls to a woman. 

 It is a play on the notes r m f ending on r, but it is more 

 of a Banshee cry than a song. Being a man, I have never 

 heard it myself. 



In view, then, of the preponderance of the Scotch scale in 

 the older songs, I gather that among the Basuto. and probably 

 Becoana, and perhaps more widely among the Bantu, that 

 early scale of the extreme people of the world, with Chinese, 

 Japanese, Coreans, Javanese and Pacific races of Asia and isles, 

 is also a possession of our natives, and it would seem of the 

 negro also, for in a collection of the " Sorrow Songs " of the 

 American negro, Mr. Dubois has six pentatonics (including one 

 of his great grandmother's, a true African melody of about 

 the year 1700, if not earlier) against five non-pentatonic, of 

 which he marks three less primitive. 



Sesuto instruments as lesiba, setolotolo, thomo i^tlie 

 drum used in female circumcision schools is called moropa) 

 seem to be entirely copied from the Bushmen, who got 

 the idea of these stringed instruments from their bows, (cf. 

 legend of Diana's bow becoming Apollo's lyre), which are 

 rare among the Bantu; or from Europeans, as the so-called 

 kafir pianos, strips of iron or of bamboo, the latter duly 

 supported about their nodes, and resonated by means of gourds 

 beneath (cf. Maritzburg and Bloemfontein Museum examples, 

 with their flat sevenths, possibly derived from the Arabs), 

 wath their flat sevenths, possibly derived from the Arabs).* 



ENTOMOLOGICAL RESEARCH. — The wide - spread 

 destruction of useful and valuable plant-products by insect 

 pests, and the dissemination of some of the most dreaded 

 human diseases by the agency of biting insects, and of serious 

 ailments amongst animals by other blood-sucking arthropods, 

 especially in Tropical Africa, have led the recently appointed 

 Entomological Research Committee to direct their energies 

 to this Continent. The results of these researches, as they 

 progress, will be published in a well -illustrated journal to be 

 called "The Bulletin of Entomological Research." 



* For Illustrations, see Stow's Native Races of South Africa. 



