It was many years ago, among the Bulu, in Kamerun. Dr. Good and myself were holding a religious service in the town of a great chief, Abesula, whose thirty-five wives were seated around him. After we had sung several hymns Dr. Good began to preach, but had not proceeded as far as secondly when Abesula, interrupting, exclaimed: “Say, white man, won’t you stop talking and sing again? And I wish you would dance with your singing; for I don’t care for singing without dancing; and I don’t like preaching at all.”
We found that Abesula’s whole family were united in this preference for comic opera. But Dr. Good and I were in hopeless disagreement as to which of us should do the dancing. Besides, the Africans themselves are expert dancers and qualified judges; and if our music had “charms to soothe the savage breast,” I am afraid that our dancing would have made more savages than it would have soothed.
After a few months among the Bulu I had an organ brought up from the coast, a baby-organ, which when folded a man could carry on his head. The people had heard that something wonderful was coming with the next caravan; and on the day of its arrival it seemed as if the whole Bulu tribe had assembled on our hill. Having unpacked the organ I set it on the porch while they all stood on the ground below. The tension of suspense during the slow progress of preparation was a test of endurance. At last, everything being ready, I sat down at the organ, filled the bellows, and amidst profound silence suddenly sounded a loud chord. Instantly the crowd bolted. Nothing was to be seen but disappearing legs. The men, being more fleet of limb, reached the hiding-places first; then the women and larger children, the smaller children being left to their fate. To them the organ was of course a fetish, and full of talking spirits. Gradually they came out from their hiding-places. Then, as fear subsided, each one began to laugh at the others and to tell his ancestors all about it. In the ensuing noise the organ had a rest. They soon became devotedly fond of it, and it was a great help in our mission work. Regularly on Sunday morning after the service I would set the organ on the porch and play for them until I was tired—and that was not very long; for in that climate the bellows were soon in such condition that the playing was prominently spectacular, done with the feet, reinforced by all the muscles of the body. In after years, among the Fang of the French Congo, I always carried an organ with me.
To all the interior natives, Bulu and Fang, and even to the coast tribe of Batanga, my playing of that little organ was much the most wonderful thing about me. In going to Africa a second time, after four years’ absence, on my way to Gaboon I landed at Batanga for a few hours. The natives remembered me as having a beard, and I was now shaved. But there was with me a fellow traveller who had just such a beard as mine had been; so that, to the natives, he looked more like me than I did myself. They of course mistook him for me; and the stranger got a friendly reception which pleased him as much as it surprised him. He said he never had met such friendly natives. But upon my protest they discovered their mistake and began to pay me some attention. I insisted that they had forgotten me and that my feelings were hurt; at which they made the most excited remonstrance. They remembered that I had played the organ. One of the boys, in his eagerness to convince me that they had not forgotten me, began to imitate my motions at the organ, which he exaggerated to an outlandish caricature in which hands, feet, head, mouth and eyes were equally active, saying as he performed: “Look me, Mr. Milligan; this be you.” Following his example, they all engaged in a performance that would have scandalized any company of self-respecting monkeys, saying the while: “This be you, Mr. Milligan; this be you.”
My fellow traveller, who may have felt somewhat chagrined at finding that the hearty reception accorded him was intended for me, turned to me and made some remarks that have no rightful place here.
We are all familiar with the legend that Pythagoras invented the first musical instrument after listening to the blacksmith’s hammers. Longfellow repeats it in the poem, “To a Child”:
“As great Pythagoras of yore,
Standing beside the blacksmith’s door,
And hearing the hammers, as they smote
The anvils with a different note,