The Buzzard Lope.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 481, 18 June 1890, Page 3

The Buzzard Lope.

The 4 Buzzard Lope,’ from the description of an American correspondent, is, the London 4 Standard ’ suggests, the latest social institution of America. It is, moreover, an indigenous product of the soil, being a dance taught to a Georgian nefro by 80 undoubted a native as the turkey buzzard. This Ethiopian, so runs the story, which no one is under any moral obligation to believe, lost his mule, and found him after many days, the solitary dish over which a party of 49 vultures were enjoying themselves. Of these unclean birds 48 took to flight, while a blase gormandiser, grey with age, and joyous with much mule, refused to retire. 4 Looking straight ’at the late owner of its banquet, the buzzard calmly tuckedibs tail under its body, drew in its beak,and proceeded to gravely 4 lope ’ a waltz around the half-picked carcase. Its action was contagious. Every negro is a born dancer, and this particular one had in his day prided himself on knowing many steps. He had danced at ‘dignity balls' in Barbadoeo, and shared in the 4 tom-tom ’ at San Domingo; bub here was a figure he had never seen before. For a minute he watched the bird 4 loping' cheerily around the dead mule. Then he joined in, and for three hours kept step with the buzzard, until, darkness falling on the wood, the winged dancer flew to its roost, while the negro went home to his cabin, convinced that even at three score and ten, man has something to learn from the fowls of the air. Feeling younger by a decade from the fresh sensation, he practised the 4 Buzzard Lope ’ until all his neighbours were captivated with it. Then from the South it spread to the North, and the mania for learning it became actually contagious. Clubs have been formed for the express purpose of teaching and learning it, and as the enthusiast who sends the account declares that it 4 beggars description,’ we shall, no doubt, soon have an opportunity of seeing whether it will be as popular in the Old as in the New World. As for a new dance, the present generation has scarcely had the chance of seeing one, so that the 4 Buzzard Lope,’ besides the recommendation of having a slang name, and coming from America —which must be undoubted merits in the eyes of ‘smart people ’—will nob require to jostle for a place in the social programme with more classical arrivals from other countries.