340 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. VI. 
Are shown in the forms of their tassels ! 
The plumes that ye planted beside them, 
Were felt in the far-away places, 
Are shown in the forms of their leaf-blades ! 
But the seed that ye see growing from them, 
Is the gift of my seven bright maidens, 
The stars of the house of my children ! 
Look well, that ye cherish their persons, 
Nor change ye the gift of their being, — 
As fertile of flesh for all men 
To the bearing of children for men, — 
Lest ye lose them, to seek them in vain ! 
Be ye brothers, ye people, and people ; 
Be ye happy, ye priests of the Corn ! 
Lo! the seed of all seed-plants is born!" 
“ Nature’s crown is love,” said Goethe, in those peeans which he raised 
to the mother and soul of all things, and with primitive peoples, no less 
than with our own race, the prelude to adolescence and manhood is a season 
of deep and intimate communion with Nature. Miss Alice Fletcher, writ- 
ing of “Love Songs among the Omaha Indians,” observes (pp. 156-7): 
“As the tribal organization reduced the personality of a man to the 
minimum, any evidence of the activity of the vital principle of individu- 
ality becomes exceedingly valuable wherever found, and these love songs 
fresent such evidence. 
“In them we discern the freer use of tonality, for tonality permitted a 
greater play of personal feeling than could be obtained through strong 
rhythms, however complicated ; their flowing cadences voiced a longing 
that had made the youth conscious of his own individuality, of his 
distinctness from the mass of men in his gens. 
“This dawning consciousness of his individuality in the longing for 
something not his own—an ideal, if you will—vindicated the stirring of 
the principle of personal freedom to choose and to act. 
“Although there is a marked subjectivity in the music, there is also a 
concentration of feeling and purpose, and at the same time a reaching- 
out toward nature, a taking into his confidence of the woods, the birds, 
and the sunlight, in the joy of his own experience. The few words in 
these songs convey the one poetic sentiment: ‘With the day I come 
>”) 
to you’; or ‘ Behold me, as the day dawns. 
Nor is the night forgotten. In the Matagalpan language, of Nicar- 
agua, the lover can say to his sweetheart: M]anzjt yalaca aycu caridt, 
“ Thou art beautiful as the moon.” 
The following brief song, composed in this language by a youth of 
Cacaopera, contains a sentiment familiar to all (Brinton, Assays of an 
Americanist, p. 408) : 
See 
f 
Ja 
ag 
pl. a 
Ee 
