The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-07-27
SOME AFRICAN PROVERBS.

TO learn the proverbs Of SaVaS people is part of the white mans bur den. for no nation can deal properly with a conquered and inferior race un'
 less it conforms in the first instance tC it's long-esta blshed truisms If not tt the puculiarities of it's folklore. Say ings that come down the stream o time like smooth polished stones arg ready to hand in the language of every tribe in the unciviized world; and in or der to guide advise and befriend g conquered people, it is without doubt necessary, at least in the first place, tc calculate with their own handy pebbles
 A great number of African proverbs
 are of practical nature. Nevertheless
 this is not to say that poetry is alto
 gether foreign 70 thme. Apt analogy falls
 into beautiful expression occasionally
 as when they say, concerning the pro-
 tective power of a great man. "The
 long shadow of the borassus palm shel-
 ters him that Is afar off; or, again, it
 touches an abysmal sublimity in mas-
 terly way as in the following, He who
 goes to Pate returns not-all that returns
 is a cry.''
 Yet these instances are few and far
 between, and they stand almost alone
 against a thousand sayings which take
 plain prose view of things whose in-
 spring grandeur has drawn songs and
 sublime sentences from other races.
 The negro mind that first described the
 galaxy as "a hen with many chickens"
 must have spent years in eliminating
 all poetry from it's calculations. This
 was probably the first gigantic effort of
 inept imagery on the part of the negro, and the second is like unto it-"Heaven and earth are two large calabashes, which being shut can never be opened" /" From this these scorners of poetry pro- ceed from worse to worse 'The sky" they say, lis the king of sheds and the earth is the queen of beds, Night"-but here the natural poetry though driven out with pitchfork, creeps in again Might is the queen of shades, and the sun is the king of torches" But once descend to the ordinary things of daily life upon which it is so easy not to write an epic peona, and you have a collection of sharp saws which may well have been set with the same instru- ment as that with which some negro races illG tuelI teetl. dlHlOSt hllleu bird" says the fool with the blow tube. 'But you cannot eat the al most in a stew" returns his more prac- tical father
 Similarly Promises are good if you can cook them" and Better is nine take it. than ten go and come.'" A self-evident proposition, but one not without point in it's analogy, is this: He who dives on dry land sacrifices his face" There Is sound physiological knowledge gathered, no doubt, empiri- cally, in these two sayings, ''The load without is carried by the load within" and "The unsettled man eats fish, the steady man eats neat Don't tell your secrets to woman is a piece of wisdom which seems to have been mas tered independently by every people on the face of the earth, but among cer- tain African tribes it appears to have an expansive application, subject to the definition of the term woman" This definition is found embodied in the pro- verb "There are more women than men" which, according to Sir Richard Burton, contains it's own explanation viz. that all those who listen to what women say are counted as women. Thus the advice of the negro practt- eally means Viewer tell your secrets to old women. maie and female" In prac- rical matters the negro sometimes adds a footrote to law which would in no way disgrace a Moses or 6 Solomon. Very gray was the hair on the head of the man who said, If boy does nine nischiefs he shall suffer for five of them-his father for the st'-Lon- lon Standard.