Another dance which I witnessed at a Yao village near Blantyre, I am not sure whether to class as a diversion or a ritual solemnity. I think it was the latter, but not (as I was at one time inclined to suppose) the _chimbandi_, or ‘great _unyago_,’ which precedes the birth of a woman’s first child (see Macdonald, _Africana_, i. 128), unless the latter has been considerably modified. In the first place, my friend Chewilaga, who appeared to play the principal part, had a baby about six weeks old; in the second, so far from only women being present, there were three men and a boy working the drums, and one man among a few casual spectators who gathered from outside; and there were other points of difference. Eight or ten women (two of them quite young girls) took part in the dance, led by Chewilaga; they were all freshly anointed, almost dripping with oil, and had on their best calicoes, and (apparently) all their beads, and wore rattles on one leg only. The drummers sat in a row on a form made out of a split log: the three men held their drums against their chests and beat them with their hands; the boy had a four-legged standing drum, which he beat with two sticks. The women—one with a baby tied to her back—stood in front of the band in a semicircle, ‘marking time,’ then formed in couples and ‘set to partners,’ then marched round, in Indian file, then bent forward from the hips, and all danced together in a kind of jigging step; then formed in semicircle again, and so _da capo_. The song (sung by the dancers) consisted of a few words only, which I failed to catch. Some of the dances for amusement are confined to one sex; in others, both take part. In one, partners are chosen and led out into the middle; in another, the man who beats the big drum leaves it at intervals and dances alone in the centre of the ring, while every one claps hands to fill up the gap. The war-dance of the Angoni—executed, perhaps, by hundreds of men leaping into the air at once and beating their shields—is very striking; the Yaos and Anyanja also have one, though the latter are not a particularly warlike race. ‘One in the war-dance,’ says a native account, ‘comes and stretches his leg, stamping down his foot, _di!_ and his gun, _di!_ before his chief, saying, “Chief, we are here, none can come to kill you, for we are not dead yet.”’ The _zinyao_ dances have been already touched on in connection with the mysteries, and the mourning dances in the chapter on funeral ceremonies. The Rev. D. C. Scott thus describes the latter, and at the same time successfully conveys the impression produced by all: ‘The heavy, deep _di! di!_ of the great bass drum, with silence succeeding, broken by the responsive wail and clapping of hands, then with the rapid call of the small _garanzi_ drum, and again with the deep hollow bass, and the never-ceasing circling of the dance, produces a weird sensation only possible in Africa.’[27] CHAPTER X FOLK-STORIES