Page:Swahili tales.djvu/463

Rh night by night, he used to sing beautiful songs; every one who heard them used to be delighted with those songs. Every one used to say to his friend, "Let us go and listen to Liongo's songs, which he sings in his room." And they used to go and listen. Every day when night came people used to go and say to him, "We have come to sing your songs, let us hear them." And he used to sing, he could not refuse, and the people in the town were delighted with them. And every day he composed different ones, through his grief at being bound. Till the people knew those songs little by little, but he and his mother and her slave knew them well. And his mother knew the meaning of those songs, and the people in the town did not.

At last one day their slave girl had brought some food, and the soldiers took it from her and ate it, and some scraps were left, and those they gave her. The slave girl told her master, "I brought food, and these soldiers have taken it from me and eaten it; there remain these scraps." And he said to her, "Give me them." And he received them and ate, and thanked God for what he had got.

And he said to the slave girl (and he was inside and the slave girl outside the door)—

And its meaning was, "You, slave girl, shall be sent to tell my mother I am a simpleton. I have not yet learnt the ways of the world. Let her make a cake, in the middle let be put files, that I may cut my fetters, and the chains may be opened, that I may enter the road, that I may