THE WAR DANCE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4867, 19 August 1925, Page 4

THE WAR DANCE.

ZULUS GREET THE PRINCE. WILD AND WONDERFUL WELCOMJjf “The finest. sight I’ve seen in Africa,” commented His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, after witnessing a great Zulu war dance at Ehhowe, the capital of Zululand, during the triumphant Royal tour of South Africa. There is an unwonted stir in the usually drowsy kraal life. Old eyes glisten. Young eyes dilate. With many a wild gesture prancing warriors slay chimerical • impis. Zulu women clap their hands and drone quaint soblike refrains as in shuffling dance they circle the men. Helterskelter, naked piccaninies dart here, there, and everywhere ; for the spark c f tlie savage is kindled, top, in their little beings (writes C. S. Stokes in the “Sydney Morning Herald”). TUe call of the morrow’s dance is in the bipod of all, “Zinyan? lembufce! Zinyane lembube !” (child of the lion) drum the Zulus in strangely harmonious chorus. And spears flash from their cleaning, and limbs are polished until they gleam in the declining sunlight. , Passes the night. ' Some of the Zulus have slumbered. Others have sepnt the hours in beer-drinking and orgy. But all are agog and awaj r before the sun climbs out of the rosy east. In little knots, and phontomlike in the eerie light, figures file along footpaths, down hillsides, and through grass and bush, all heading for the highway that leads to stirring adventure.

Wizened old men jog along, “some misty island of sanguinary thought,” bringing back again a long-gone bat-tle-youth. Warriors in their prime, monuments of human power, press impetuously on the way. Proud—almost majestic—is their bearing, every motion revealing tense, pent-up excitement. The great dance, the liberal feast to follow, the maidens to applaud. What more . could heart of warrior crave ? “KWa I Sicela I Imikonto 1” chant the warriors in deepthroated unison. And the womenfolk chorus the utterances, and the patriarchs and piccaninnies pipe the ejaculations in many keys.

“Bayete ! Bayete !” Thousands of leaping and gesticulating Zulus thus greet the great white chief. Th'eir welcome, though wild, is wonderful. This surging tide of black humanity raises a collective voice of no uncertain expression. Headman and herdswoman, belle and beau, chief and piccaninny, welded together in their principles of rough companionship, are one in the outpouring of a torrent of ’delight. So on with the dance; and soon limbs and bodies, all but naked, tingle with the tonic of speed and savage excitement. Whoops ring out. Weirdly-patterned shields arc lifted. And the rays of the sun glint on ’ assegai, on tambourine, and bn that unpretentious but most effective sound-producer, the tin can. Strategic are the formations, and intricate the movements, through which the dancers strut and caper. Now dignity is uppermost. Now the warriors are childlike in their frolics. And all the while the womenfolk urge on the men.

Conventions in the matter of feminine dress as the European knows them go unobserved. t Zulus there may be who, having rubbed shoulders .with city civilisation, Would “point a moral.’’ But if such there are, they .do not sit around, “like the members oft the Inquisition, debating on the keen letter of the proprieties.” The dance and the day are done. The night has been athrill with the uproar of feasting. But the oxen, roasted whole, are eaten, and the units of the Zulu nation who have journeyed far to greet the great white chief lie wrapped in their blankets round the fires that are dying—dying. And perhaps here and there one of the youthful warriors, excited, by the afternoon’s triumph, overfed by the evening’s feast, sees in his dreamis the figure of the great and savage Chaka flicker forward on the hsadowy film of history; and, dreaming on, fancies himself as mighty, as victorious, and as wealthy in wives as that centrury-dead “Child of Night and Evil.”