"THE BLENDING"--of alternate prose and verse--"is not unknown in various
countries." Thus in Dr. Steere's _Swahili Tales_ (London, 1870), p. vii.
we read: "It is a constant characteristic of popular native tales to have
a sort of burden, which all join in singing. Frequently the skeleton of
the story seems to be contained in these snatches of singing, which the
story-teller connects by an extemporized account of the intervening
history . . . Almost all these stories had sung parts, and of some of
these, even those who sung them could scarcely explain the meaning . . .
I have heard stories partly told, in which the verse parts were in the
Yao and Nyamwezi languages." The examples given (_Sultan Majnun_) are
only verses supposed to be chanted by the characters in the tale. It is
improbable that the Yaos and Nyamwezis borrowed the custom of inserting
verse into prose tales from Arab literature, where the intercalated verse
is usually of a moral and reflective character.

Mr. Jamieson, in _Illustrations of Northern Antiquities_ (p. 379),
preserved a _cante-fable_ called _Rosmer Halfman_, or _The Merman
Rosmer_. Mr. Motherwell remarks (_Minstrelsy_, Glasgow, 1827, p. xv.):
"Thus I have heard the ancient ballad of _Young Beichan and Susy Pye_
dilated by a story-teller into a tale of remarkable dimensions--a
paragraph of prose and then a _screed_ of rhyme alternately given." The
example published by Mr. Motherwell gives us the very form _of Aucassin
and Nicolete_, surviving in Scotch folk lore:-

"Well ye must know that in the Moor's Castle, there was a mafsymore,
which is a dark deep dungeon for keeping prisoners. It was twenty feet
below the ground, and into this hole they closed poor Beichan. There he
stood, night and day, up to his waist in puddle-water; but night or day