L’ENVOI
The student of anthropology is urged to be precise and accurate in his record of facts, and the haunting fear of giving rein to the imaginative side, especially when dealing with beliefs which have almost ceased to evoke response from Western races, often tends to make one’s narrative seem dull and lifeless.
The poet is bound by no such paltry conventions, but it is rare to find one who strikes the true note—intimate knowledge coupled with acute insight.
The late Captain Cullen Gouldsbury of Rhodesian repute possessed this rare gift, and the writer takes the liberty of reproducing the following poem as a remarkable and unique attempt to express the native point of view:
The Point of View
From Songs out of Exile by Cullen Gouldsbury
(Fisher Unwin, 1912)
White man, cease from your tales—your God may be good for you,
But think you that aught avails to fashion our creed anew?
We, who are born and bred in the fear of ’Mlimo’s wrath,
Heirs to eternal dread shall we cast our Witchmen forth
To take as a load instead the creed of ye from the North?
Lo! we are born in the fear of wild and unspeakable things;
Born in the Bush land here, where the souls of the dead have wings.
Hovering high in the air where the shades of even fall,
Shrinking in dim despair at the gate of each lonely kraal—
Scoff not, white man! beware, when the ghosts of the dead men call.
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There are Spirits that walk by night with their heads behind their backs—
There are Spirits that fade from sight in the gloom of the forest tracks;
There are ghosts of the babes that died in the kraal long moons ago,
Ghosts of cripples that glide with shambling pace and slow,
Ghosts of the new-made bride and of many a girl we know.
Yestereen, when the sun sank low in the western sky,
And silently, one by one, the hovering bats flew by,
Ziwa, pride of my heart, my youngest and best-loved wife,
Drew me a pace apart, saying: “Husband, ’tis done with life,
Nay friend, shrink not, nor start! lend me your hunting knife!”
Ay! and she lies there dead—and the youths and maidens mourn,
They bury her, so one said, in the cool of to-morrow’s dawn—
For the evil moor-hens keep a watch on this kraal, I know,
And perch when the world’s asleep, on the hut-tops then below.
See! I will kill a sheep to ward off a further blow!
White man, laugh if you will! such tales are for babes, you say?
Have you no God of Ill? Do you not cringe and pray?
Offering sacrifice in a temple built of stone?
Do you not seek advice from a priest man of your own?
Do you not pay a price? Are we the heathen alone?
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