Volume Three—Chapter Thirty Three.

Festivities of Easter.

Easter day, instead of being celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox, is in Abyssinia kept one lunation later. On its recurrence, we received a special invitation to the annual public banquet held in the palace; and, whilst ascending the hill in full uniform, were preceded by the capering leader of the royal band. “Let me sing—I will sing,” he exclaimed, as the attendants would have restrained his antics—“why should not the father of song dance before the fathers of gold?” Tents had been erected in the courtyard, and a separate repast provided for the members of the British Embassy. Countless crowds, decked out in their gayest apparel, filled every avenue and enclosure; and long files of slaves, with jars, baskets, and trenchers, hurrying to and fro from the kitchens and magazines, proclaimed the extensive nature of the preparations making for the regal entertainment.

In the morning at eight o’clock, the doors of the great hall were thrown open, and a burst of wild music from the royal band ushered in the company to a spacious barn-like apartment, the dingy aspect of which formed a strong contrast to the galaxy of light that illumines regal hospitality in Europe. Holding high festival to the entire adult population of the metropolis, who for six weeks past had subsisted on cow-kail and stinging-nettles, the king reclined in state within a raised alcove, furnished with the wonted velvet cushions and tapestries, and loaded with silver ornaments—the abridgement of ancient Ethiopic magnificence. Priests, nobles, warriors, baalomaals, and pages, stood around the throne, which was flanked by a long line of attendants, bearing straight silver falchions of antique Roman model, belonging to the different churches. Bull-hides carpeted the floor; and the lofty walls of the chamber, although destitute of architectural decoration, were hung throughout with a profusion of richly-emblazoned shields, from each of which depended a velvet scarf or cloak of every colour in the rainbow.

A low horse-shoe table of wicker-work, supported upon basket pedestals, extended the entire length of the hall. Thin unleavened cakes of sour teff heaped one upon the other served as platters. Mountains of wheaten bread piled in close contiguity, and crowned with fragments of stewed fowls, covered the groaning board. Bowls containing a decoction of red pepper, onions, and grease, were flanked by long-necked decanters of old mead; and at short intervals stood groups of slaves carrying baskets crammed with reeking collops of raw flesh just severed from the newly-slain carcass.

Taking their seats in treble rows upon the ground, the crowded guests were each provided with his own knife, fashioned like a reaping-hook, and serving him equally in the battlefield and at the banquet. Four hundred voracious appetites, whetted by forty days of irksome abstinence, were constantly ministered to by fresh arrivals of quivering flesh from the courtyard, where oxen in quick succession were being thrown down and slaughtered in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Barilles and capacious horns filled with hydromel of intoxicating age were rapidly drained and replenished under the eye of the monarch; and strings of eunuchs with the females pertaining to the royal kitchen, clad in gala dresses and striped cotton robes, passed and repassed continually with interminable supplies of bread to rebuild the demolished fabric on the uprising of each satiated group.

Again the great doors were thrown open, and another famished set entered, amid the increasing din. Harpers and fiddlers played, danced, and sang with untiring perseverance; and ever and anon one of the king’s female choristers lifted up her shrill voice with the most extravagant panegyric on the hospitality and munificence of her royal master, or burst forth into unqualified eulogy on the liberality of his British guests.

    “In stature like the lance he bears,
    His godlike mien the prince declares;
    And fam’d for virtue through the land,
    All bow to Sáloo’s just command.

    “The sabre feels the royal grasp.
    And Pagans writhe in death’s cold clasp;
    The Galla taste the captive fare.
    And dread the vengeance which they dare.”

    “Our warriors tremble at the sight of the mighty elephant, but he sinks prostrate beneath the guns of the white men—Weiho, weiho,

    “They are a brave nation.

    “We have been loaded with strange gifts, for the white men hold in their hands the keys of health and wealth—Weiho,

    “They are a great nation.

    “Then hail to the friends who came o’er the wide water,
    Strangers and guests from a far distant land;
    And welcome to Shoa, the fortune which brought her
    The lords of the daring and generous hand.”

The royal band, which occupied the vacant space between the tables, is composed of many wind instruments of various lengths and sizes—the embilta having a perforation to which the lips are applied as in the flute, whilst the malakat is fashioned after the form of a trombone. No performer possesses above one pipe, nor, like the Russian, is he master of more than one note. Tune there is none—each playing according to the dictates of his own taste, unguided by any musical scale. After the hoarse and terrible blast of the trumps, the symphony falls soft upon the ear; and it was on this occasion curiously contrasted with the deep thunder of the kubbero, which pealed without intermission from the secret apartments of the queen.

The harp, styled bugana, is a truly strange fabrication of wood, leather, and sheep’s entrails. It presents the appearance of an old portmanteau which has been built upon by children with the rudest materials, in imitation of the lyre of the days of Jubal. Possessing five strings, and used only as an accompaniment to the voice, the monotonous notes produced are in strict unison with the appearance of the instrument; and even in the halls of Menilek, where the chords are struck by a master finger, they shed “no soul of music,” and might be mute with advantage.

What then is to be said of the Abyssinian fiddle, whose squeaking voice presided at this festive board? Alas! the inharmonious sounds elicited by the grating contact of the bow might lead to the conclusion that the unhappy spirit of music was confined in the interior, and uttered harsh screams and moans as fresh tortures were inflicted upon her agonised sinews! A gourd, or a hollow square of wood, is covered with a skin of parchment as a sounding-board, and furnished with a rude neck and a single string. Years of practice have imparted to Dághie, the court buffoon, an extraordinary degree of excellence; but even he is not Paganini; and every amateur performer in the realm considering himself at perfect liberty to scrape throughout the day with soul-harrowing perseverance, unlucky, indeed, must be pronounced the site of that residence which is adjacent to the proprietor of a masanko.

As Easter day drew on to its close, the riotous mirth of uncontrolled festivity waxed louder and louder within the palace walls, whilst quarrels and drunken brawls prevailed throughout the city. The carousal continued until dark, by which time the bones of three hundred and fifty steers had been picked—countless measures of wheat had been consumed—and so many hogsheads of potent old hydromel had been drained to the dregs, that, saving the royal and munificent host, scarcely one sober individual, whether noble or plebeian, was any where to be seen.