Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/256

242 obtained from the Zulus, and which resembles Menenius Agrippa's famous apologue: "Guess this: A person is invested with the functions of a king. He does nothing; his people work for his profit, while he continues idle. He tells them what they have to do, since he sees for them. It is he who directs them to where there is something to eat, then his people bring the food to the house; but he himself does nothing; he remains the sovereign, and only deigns to help his subjects. One day they rebelled. They came to the king and said: 'You ought not to be our sovereign and to be doing nothing; we do not feel any good from your power.' He answered: 'Yery well; since you will not have me for your king, I will be still and look on the ground, and it will not be long before you find out that I am indeed your king; you will fall over precipices, you will be eaten up by wild beasts, and you will starve to death because you can not find anything to eat. You will go blind if you try to fight against me.'

Then the rebels saw indeed that he was a sovereign if he could talk that way. And they said: *We will recognize you as our ruler so that we may live, since, if we starve to death, the royal majesty we claim for ourselves will do us no good. A man is no king if he is not alive.' So he was recognized as sovereign by all the country, and his kingdom was happy.

He was a person who never worked, and always stayed at home. If he fell sick, all his people were in danger of starving; nobody left his house, for fear of falling into a pit; every one prayed for the recovery of the monarch, and rejoiced when he was well."

The answer to the riddle is, "The eye."

Songs are abundant among the blacks, and fill partly the functions of the Greek comedies in the time of Aristophanes and of newspapers in modern states. They denounce suspected persons, glorify victorious soldiers, and abuse the enemies of the country. Sometimes the singers improvise variants and celebrate the praises of their hearers, but this very rarely happens with respect to the whites, for the negroes generally cherish a great aversion against them, and they apply satirical verses to Europeans. For example, a Hottentot pupil ridiculed his European master: "O son of a little woman—who never had milk enough—you were sent among us! The white man first examines carefully the place where he is going to sit—and only then helps you. Oh, the little man—son of a little woman—our people are sons of lions."

The songs vary much in construction according to the tribe. They consist of strophes and are generally rhymed. Among some peoples, however, the ear is gratified with a simple assonance. The musical sense is much developed among the blacks, and a European