Why then do you sob so?
I am not sobbing, but merely breathing.
Why are you as if beside yourself?
I am not beside myself, but am thinking.
Why are you as if weeping?
I am not weeping, but have got dust in my eye.
Why are you sighing?
I am not sighing, but have a cold.
Why are you wobegone?
I do not wish to appear wobegone, but my child is dead! Then she bursts into a flood of tears and makes all the people sorry.[1]
Consider well! do not bide your calamity.
A fatalistic sentiment appears in the following, entitled
To Die is not to be avoided.
The guinea-fowl when flying departs not from the wood, nor, when hiding, from the earth, and the fanòro shrub dies on the ground. All the hairs of the head cannot bind death, and tears cannot hold him; therefore give up the dead, for the earth is the forsaking-place of the beloved ones, the dwelling of the living, the home when dead.
Here is a bit of “tall talk,” in which the powers of nature are invoked to help against an enemy. It should be noted that all the natural objects mentioned are personified by adding to them the personal prefix Ra-, which can hardly be paralleled in English by our prefixes Mr. or Mrs. &c. without a somewhat comic effect, which is quite absent in the Malagasy:—
The far-reaching power of the Imagination.
The sun is indeed my father, the moon is my mother, the stars are but my subjects; Bétsimitàtatra [the great rice plain west of Antanànarivo] is my rice plot, the meteors are my guns, and the thunderbolts are my cannon, with which I will fire at those who hate me.
Here is another example of the same habit of boasting of one’s own power, in the form of a dialogue between two men:—
- ↑ When a death occurs in any house, the relatives and friends assemble in large numbers to condole with the family, to mitsàpa àlahéloy i.e., to “touch sorrow.”
