338 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



instruments are all borrowed from the coast people. He 

 delights in singing, yet he has no metrical songs : he 

 contents himself with improvising a few words without 

 sense or rhyme, and repeats them till they nauseate : the 

 long, drawling recitative generally ends in " Ah ! ha 11 ! " 

 or some such strongly-nasalised sound. Like the Somal, 

 he has tunes appropriated to particular occasions, as the 

 elephant-hunt or the harvest-home. When mourning, 

 the love of music assumes a peculiar form : women 

 weeping or sobbing, especially after chastisement, will 

 break into a protracted threne or dirge, every period of 

 which concludes with its own particular groan or wail : 

 after venting a little natural distress in a natural sound, 

 the long, loud improvisation, in the highest falsetto key, 

 continues as before. As in Europe the " laughing-song " 

 is an imitation of hilarity somewhat distressing to the 

 spirits of the audience, so the " weeping-song " of the 

 African only tends to risibility. His wonderful loquacity 

 and volubility of tongue have produced no tales, poetry, 

 nor display of eloquence ; though, like most barbarians, 

 somewhat sententious, he will content himself with 

 squabbling with his companions, or with repeating some 

 meaningless word in every different tone of voice during 

 the weary length of a day's march. His language is 

 highly artificial and musical : the reader will have ob- 

 served that the names which occur in these pages often 

 consist entirely of liquids and vowels, that consonants are 

 unknown at the end of a word, and that they never 

 are double except at the beginning. Yet the idea of 

 a syllabarium seems not to have occurred to the negroid 

 mind. Finally, though the East African delights in the 

 dance, and is an excellent timist — a thousand heels 

 striking the ground simultaneously sound like one — his 

 performance is as uncouth as perhaps was ever devised 

 by man. He delights in a joke, which manages him like 



