We will suppose that the husband has lately paid a great amount of attention to one of his younger wives--a circumstance which naturally gives great offence to one of the older women.

This wife, when she has an opportunity and is alone with her husband, commences to sing or chant a plaint--a little thing of quite her own composing.
Into this song she weaves all the abuse which long experience tells her will lash her husband up to boiling-point.

The later stanzas complain that the singer has been taken from her own home among a nation of real warriors to live among a gang of skulking cowards, whose hearts, livers, and other vital organs are not at all up to the standard of her people.
The epithets are carefully arranged up a scale until they reach _bandy- legged_--an utterly unpardonable insult.

But there is, beyond this, one other unpublishable remark, which causes the husband to take up the yam- stick and fell the singer with one tremendous blow, which is frequently so serious as to disable her for many days.

The other women at once see to their sister, who has incurred the wrath of her lord, and rub her wounds with weird medicaments.