cases a very relative term. It is not only that to preserve both metre and sense is too large an order for the average person, but that the missionary who attempts the task finds himself confronted at the outset by a ready-made technical phraseology, a set of theological and other notions, the growth of centuries of culture-current coin to us, but presupposing much which is entirely unknown to the native mind. If he does not set about the work in an utterly soulless and mechanical fashion, he must grapple with the question of what he really means by these technicalities, which he has been glibly using all his life. He must reduce them to their very simplest terms, or, failing that, substitute something else-something intelligible on broadly human grounds, something which appeals alike to people trained in any theology or in none. And, whether the immediate work in hand be a success or not, this process is of inestimable value to the missionary himself. It is akin to what O. W. Holmes calls depolarization. As a flagrant example of what should be avoided, we might take the first verse and chorus of the well-known Take me as I am "-a catchy tune, which has achieved extensive popularity: Within certain limits, of course, a displaced accent, or an unwonted stress on a usually inconspicuous syllable, not only comes within the limits of acknowledged poetical license, but, rightly used, adds to the beauty of a line. There is no need to quote examples, which will readily occur to the reader; but the license of our hymn-writers is not akin to the "ladýe," "daughtér," "meiníe" of the old ballads and their imitators, or Shakespeare's "charácter'd," 'sepúlchre," or Milton's "aspèct," "impùlse," "triúmph 66 ing," which only add to the stateliness of his verse. results in a grotesque travesty of the language. It The beautiful tune of "Ewing," deservedly a favourite at home, goes to one of the best of the Mang'anja hymns. The difficulties of the iambic metre have not been quite successfully surmounted; still, it goes to show that, if only the rule about double endings be observed, one could, with little trouble, produce very decent Mang'anja iambics. As it gives a good idea of the sound of that melodious language (inferior, however, according to some competent observers, in this respect to Yao), and also illustrates the remarks previously made on the simplification of imagery, etc., I quote the first and last of its four stanzas. It will be seen that it has travelled a considerable distance from St. Bernard's original; but even so, I would not venture to guarantee all the metaphors being understood by a native. without further explanation: "Mu Mpala ya Mulungu mu li mo yera mu, Ku kala nayo mpala ya ku kongola i. * This has been well put by Bishop Colenso: "The regular fall of the accent on the penultimate makes the ordinary long, common, and short metres of English psalmody utterly unsuitable for Zulu hymns. These tunes should on no account be used for this purpose. The practice of so doing arises from want of due consideration, or else from mere want of taste. Missionaries too often compel the natives to offend against all the laws of accentuation, and force the rhythm of their own words, not once or twice, but constantly, in singing, in order to accommodate our favourite tunes. Let any Englishman attempt to sing the line 'O'er the gloomy hills of darkness,' to any L. M. or C. M. tune, and he will soon be convinced of the frightful effect which the singing of words to such tunes must have upon the ear of the natives, until, by degrees, the taste becomes wholly perverted. But for prose hymns, suited for chanting, like the Psalms, or for metrical hymns without rhyme, the Zulu language is very well adapted. The metre, however, will require to be trochaic in its character" ("First Steps in Zulu," p. 9). altogether hold good for Mang'anja and Yao. natives like " such tunes is nothing to the point. scanned as an anapæst and set to a lively, catchy tune, might conceivably become popular. The last sentence does not But what would that mean? The argument that "the "Ndi nkondo i to leka kwa Mlungu konkuja; Ndi ukapolo wa ta, udano wa choka ; Ndi za ku opsya zonse ndi zo sauka bi! Ndi mwai wa ku Mlungu u dzoza mitu pi !” Translated as literally as may be, this is: "In the City of God (mpala, the chief's village, the Great Kraal, is the nearest approach to a city known to these tribes) there is light therein, and she is our mother who nurses us all. Our hearts rejoice with dwelling in that city, that beautiful one. ... "And war ceases there, at (the dwelling-place of) God (kwa corresponds more nearly to the French chez than to anything in English); and slavery is over; hatred has departed; and all frightful (things) and grievous (things) are not, and the blessedness of God anoints all heads." This hymn shows very strikingly the difficulties of the monosyllabic ending. Here every line (the lines being double) requires it, and it has been obtained in a variety of more or less legitimate ways. Mang'anja has a variety of small particles which come in as handy to the versewriter as μ and de, yɛ and ovv, to the undergraduate in his Greek prose. Some of these are enclitic demonstratives, like the yo in nyumbayo already referred to, which, as has been explained, shift the accent of the word to which they are added, and are therefore, as a rule, inadmissible at the end of a line, though this rule is not invariable. Then there are what may be called the prepositional encliticsmo, ko, po, answering to the prepositions mu (in), ku (at, to), pa (at, upon), and used thus: M'nyumba mo=in the house; ku mudzi ko at the village. We have also a large number of interjectional particles, which have a kind of vague adjectival or adverbial force, and often cannot be exactly translated. In the closing lines of our quotation, "bi" is a negative particle, "pi" expresses the action of anointing. These are independent words, and may quite legitimately have the accent thrown on them; but, naturally, it is a device which ought not to be employed to Then there are such particles as tu (see the second line of the above hymn), of which all one can say with certainty is that they are used for emphasis. In the next line, we find the preposition ni="with" or "and," excess. = made to bear an unwonted and awkward stress of the voice by being thrust into the post of danger. Similar things, no doubt, have been done by the masters, who knew when and how to try risky experiments; but memory fails to recall a single felicitous instance of the use of “and” as an accented rhyming syllable. i, at the end of the last line, is the demonstrative particle of the third class, whose concord is ya; it belongs properly to mpala, but is dragged in rather awkwardly at the end of the participial form—" ya ku kongola " (" beautiful "; lit., "of being beautiful "). The most successful hymns in this book are those which approximate more or less to the chant form, as the versions of "Adeste fideles," and an original hymn by the late Dr. W. A. Scott, sung to Troyte's Chant, which was a great favourite, to judge by the frequency with which one heard boys singing snatches from it. We may quote one verse, as a further and still better proof that the iambic metre is not necessarily contrary to the spirit of the language. The dactyl and anapast, by-the-by, seem, outside certain rather narrow limits, to be quite inadmissible. Yet even here the poet owes much to the particle, demonstrative or interjectional : "Mitambo inu ya kumwamba ko, Yo gunda mvula m'lenga lenga mo, Mau akula a nenera po Halleluyah !" "Ye clouds on high, who thunder (for) rain in the heavens, and speak with a great voice, Hallelujah!" Of course, the best and most natural course would be for native hymns to be written by natives. This is already done to a certain extent, and the practice is increasing, but is spoilt by the assumption that they must use our musical and metrical forms. "Of course," said a lady missionary, "they must supply the language, but they must get their idea of poetry, the rhymes and metre, from us." One fails to see the "of course," as far as the "poetry" is concerned. It is instructive in this connection to glance back # at the beginnings of medieval Europe, a glance which might easily be elaborated into a treatise. The early German and English monks wrote in Latin for the use of the cloister, but the singers among them, with a message to their people, uttered it, as they did their sermons, in their own mother tongue. And what is more to our present purpose, Cadmon and Otfried, and the unnamed Saxon monk who wrote the "Heliand," did not attempt sapphics or elegiacs, but poured their thoughts into the rude alliterative couplets of their national "makers." And the Teutonic speech so far conquered its conquerors that the Latin hymns which have come down to us among the most precious devotional treasures of the Middle Ages are not composed in the classic measures, but in rhymed verse, measured by beat or accent rather than quantity. The verse, of course, was very different from "Tho uuarun thar in lante hirta haltente; thes fehes datun uuarta uuidar fianta," etc.,* but it is developed from it under Southern civilizing influThe parallel would not be difficult to make out. ences. Of the hymns written by natives included in the first edition of the Blantyre hymn-book, only one (94) is in Mang'anja "Blest are the pure in heart," to the tune of "Swabia." The translator, Thomas Mpeni, son of the old Makololo chief Masea, has not succeeded in adhering to the somewhat difficult measure without considerable violence to his accents; but his lines are, at any rate, clear and idiomatic. Joseph Bismark, formerly a teacher at Domasi, has contributed (86) a Yao version of "Forward be our watchword," which is to a great extent free from the above objections; but the frequent particles at the end of alternate lines make one wish he had used double endings, which might perhaps have been accomplished without necessitating an alteration in the tune. As I have not quoted any Yao * Krist., i. 12. |