Madi people

“ And we were glad to find that many thoughtful men among the upper classes of Malagasy society feel it to be a serious evil, which must some day be carefully considered by the Malagasy people and be entirely abolished. ”

“ If once you win their respect and love—and they are not difficult to win—you may do almost anything you like with them, and they in turn will do anything for you. Doubtless some of the above-named features are common to most heathen people; others are peculiar to the Malagasy.
It does not follow nowadays that when any great man in either the political or religious world changes his views, or his creed, all his followers or dependants change with him. ”

“ As it was in our Lord’s time, and is at home now, the rich do not crowd into the Kingdom, and it is left chiefly to the common people to hear the Gospel gladly, and press into it; so, with few exceptions, it has been in Madagascar. The higher the social scale the more profuse was the profession, the less the real practice. From many points of view both the capital and the country districts might have been compared to a stagnant pond, on which the green slime of ages had gathered thickly. ”

“ Although the intellectual capacities of the people of Madagascar appear equal to their physical qualities, which are equal to those of other portions of the human race, yet they are generally characterized by apathy, want of decision, and excessive indolence. ”

“ In the Malagasy proverbs and folk-lore you have some few of the ‘fossilized remains of former beliefs’; and in these the people were told something of God and goodness, of right and wrong, while hints were given of a life beyond the grave, where good men would be rewarded and wicked men punished. ”

“ In one or the other of these two classes, the several tribes inhabiting the island may be included. In fact, so far as color is any indication, there are but two distinct races in Madagascar, the olive and the black; and the people may be supposed to be derived from a mixture of these two, forming all kinds of varieties of which their complexion, hair, and features are capable. From the character of the language, it may be presumed that the population is composed partly of the Malay and partly of the African race. ”

“ Madina was a city in a sense quite different from that in which the term could be applied to Mecca. It had developed a civic life, rudimentary no doubt but very far in advance of the Meccan conditions, and had inherited a constitutional tradition from Aramaean and Jewish colonists. At Madina the Prophet began to perceive the difference produced by the association of men in an ordered communal life as contrasted with the incoherence of the older tribal conditions, and the accompanying difference of attitude towards religion. ”

“ Hence the poor show the Malagasy made in fighting for their fatherland, until they found that they had been betrayed, and then they rose in rebellion against the French rule when it was too late. Madagascar and its people were betrayed, sold, bought, and paid for, and then the chief intriguer, who was also one of the arch-traitors, when he had done his infamous work was flung aside, while it is said that the other arch-traitor and some of his confederates had to pay large sums for their worthless lives. ”

“ I have never met with a more immoral people than the inhabitants of Madagascar; and where there is such demoralization, family ties must be of the loosest. I dare not trust my pen to chronicle the many immoral customs which prevail, not only among the people generally, but in the highest families in the island, and appear quite natural to the people here. I can only say that female virtue is looked upon as quite valueless, and that the laws regarding marriage and progeny are of a stranger kind than any where else in the world. ”

“ There are pure Africans in abundance (as we shall see) scattered about in certain districts on the west, imported through the Arab slave trade. And that African element has tainted the original Malagasy race. But no original and distinct tribe on the island has yet been pointed out as long settled 170African colonists: much less can the entire Malagasy people be identified with such a tribe. On the contrary the three great divisions of the Malagasy hold together; embrace almost the entire island ”

“ Some of the amusements of the Malagasy are quite curious. The wife in saluting her husband, or the slave his master, on his return from war or from a journey, crawls on the ground and licks his feet.
One of their common amusements is to form themselves into two parties in order to abuse each other in the most violent language that their imaginations can invent; and those who excel in the most abusive vituperation, obtain the plaudits of the spectators. ”

“ Madina is a respectable walled town, containing about two hundred and fifty huts, and from eight hundred to a thousand inhabitants, all Sonikeas; it is the capital of the kingdom of Woolli, and the residence of the king. Outside the walls is a strong stake or palisade fence, about five feet high, which gave to the place the appearance of a large fortified redoubt. The interior of the town was beautifully shaded with large trees of the fig and palm kind, and altogether had a very good outward appearance. ”

“ The people from Madagascar have a quarter of their own. Among the women slaves are Georgians, Circassians and Greeks. There are Negroes from every tribe and country, and, not least in importance, what are called by the natives, Wazungu, that is, strange, startling unaccountable folk, and they are our own European selves, from the half-caste Portuguese of Goa to the last American improvements. ”

“ The Malagasy people who inhabit the island appear to be a single race, notwithstanding some tradition about “dwarfs.” Nowhere do we find any tribe or clan or race in any secluded corner of the land, (such as we meet with in the hill districts of India, of Sumatra and Borneo) , totally different from the inhabitants of the plains or open provinces. Nor do we meet with any portion of the people specially degraded below their fellows as a conquered and despised race. ”

“ Like all other barbarous people, the Malagasy are generous and hospitable, their own modes of living being so miserable that they are very willing to share freely with others. Where people rely upon the spontaniety of nature, or upon the labor of slaves for their food and shelter, it becomes an easy matter to manifest the ruder semblances of hospitality; but as for imparting Christian solace and comfort they know nothing. These they rather persecute and expel.
Should one be content to dine on locusts and silk worms, he could be highly entertained. ”

“ Guy would have taken Maddy’s side then, whatever he might have thought, and he replied:
“Not lack of brains, certainly. Education and circumstances have much to do with one’s views upon that subject. For my part, I like to see people consistent. Now, this old ignoramus, as you call him, lays great stress on pomp and vanities, and when I asked him once what he meant by them, he mentioned dancing in particular as one of the things which you church members promise to renounce;” and Guy bowed towards Maria, who, knowing that she was one 249of the church members referred to, winced perceptibly. ”

“ The citizens of Al-Madinah are a favoured race, although the city is not, like Meccah, the grand mart of the Moslem world or the meeting-place of nations. They pay no taxes, and reject the idea of a Miri, or land-cess, with extreme disdain. Are we, the children of the Prophet, they exclaim, to support or to be supported? ”

“ I then turned to him seriously, and, speaking loud enough for all to hear, I said, "Tell Madibbo it was God's will we should have suffered losses, but we are not defeated. We are wandering about in his country, and if he does not like us to do so, he must accept the situation, as he has neither the power nor the courage to stop us. If he is really an adherent of the Mahdi, and desires to enjoy the pleasures of Paradise promised him, then let him come here to-morrow morning. We shall wait for him, and for his sake we shall not march to-morrow." ”

“ The Assyrian name Badana is somewhat like the Hebrew Madan, as it is vocalized in the Septuagint version of Genesis, 25: 2. At the beginning of a word b is often interchanged with m. According to the Bible, Madan is related to the Madianites just as is ʻÊfa’, the Assyrian Ḫajappa. The Assyrian record unites the last-named with Badana, thus justifying us in assigning Madan or Badana to the Biblical tribe of ʻÊfa’ and in locating its camping place near the oasis of Tejma: that is to the southeast of the present settlement of al-ʻAḳaba, or the ancient Elath. ”

“ A careful study of these Malagasy sayings, together with the native proverbs, throws considerable light upon the notions of the people as regards morals. Many of them contain much good counsel as to the avoidance of various vices and follies, together with rebukes of the loose native habits as regards marriage; for example, there is one against forsaking one’s wife to marry a richer one! ”

“ Why should children be employed? Because they are the only people who can be depended on to tell the truth, and if they notice anything unusual they are very sure, sooner or later, to tell what they have seen. For the same reason, perhaps, and also on æsthetic grounds, the Fama is waited on by women only, most of whom are the daughters of blacksmiths or griots, specially attached to the chief, their name, Korosiguis, meaning, “those who sit beside.” Moreover, Mademba showed great acumen in his choice of servants, and I never saw so many pretty girls anywhere else in the Sudan. ”

“ If we admit the identity of the Maisaimaneis and Banizomaneis with the Marsimani of the Assyrian records, we likewise arrive at the region west of the oasis of Tejma and west of the great transport route from southern Arabia to Syria and Egypt, and thus at the region where the classical writers locate the oasis of Madiama and where, according to the Bible, we seek the land of Madian. ”

“ Hon'ble Miss Chairwoman, Madams, Misses, and Hon'ble Mister Opener, the humble individual now palpitating on his limbs before you is a denizen from a land whose benighted, ignorant inhabitants are accustomed to treat the females of their species as small fry and fiddle faddle. Yes, Madams and Misses, in India the woman is forbidden to eat except in the severest solitude, and after her lord and master has surfeited his pangs of hunger ”

“ The names of Dingane and Bambata, Hintsa and Makana, Squngthi and Dalasile, Moshoeshoe and Sekhukhuni, were praised as the glory of the entire African nation. I hoped then that life might offer me the opportunity to serve my people and make my own humble contribution to their freedom struggle. ”

“ During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. ”

“ Some of the work done by the Malagasy girls we brought home with us, and it astonished our friends very much indeed.
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Scant justice would be done to the work of missions, if no account were taken of the work done by the wives of the missionaries. Their work is seldom reported, and is not always reportable, but it has to be done all the same. In one sense their work is never done, for they are always at it, helping in a score of unnumbered and unsentimental ways. They visit the schools, conduct the sewing-classes, look after the Bible women, and teach the female Bible-classes. ”

“ The new régime has served as a sort of dark background—although it has been at a terrible cost—to Protestant mission work. The Malagasy themselves said: ‘We were bad, and our forefathers were bad; but they and we too were poor, ignorant, dark-minded fools; but that educated men, professing civilization, should behave as these men do is shameful in the extreme. How different their lives and conduct from that of the other foreigners! But is not the one class Protestant, the other Roman Catholic? ”

“ Down at the cottage in Honedale there were many consultations held and many fears expressed by the aged couple as to what would be the result of all Guy was doing for their child. Woman-like, Grandma Markham felt a flutter of pride in thinking that Maddy was going to school in a big city like New York. It gave her something to talk about with her less fortunate neighbors, who wondered, and gossiped, 218and envied, but could not bring themselves to feel unkindly toward the girl Maddy, who had grown up in their midst, and who as yet was wholly unchanged by prosperity. ”

“ At the outset, I want to say that the suggestion made by the State in its opening that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners or communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did, both as an individual and as a leader of my people, because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any outsider might have said. ”

“ Chapter XXI. THE PEOPLE OF AL-MADINAH. AL-MADINAH contains but few families descended from the Prophet's Auxiliaries. I heard only of four whose genealogy is undoubted. These were,—
1. The Bayt al-Ansari, or descendants of Abu Ayyub, a most noble race whose tree ramifies through a space of fifteen hundred years. They keep the keys of the Kuba Mosque, and are Imams in the Harim, but the family is no longer wealthy or powerful. ”

“ The manners and customs of the Malagasy are interesting as being chiefly of native growth, and as showing the strange developments of the human mind when not directed by those moral axioms whose exercise are absolutely essential to the higher order of civilization. Even before the birth of an infant there are ceremonies in anticipation of "the hour of nature's sorrow,” which are as unmeaning as they are unnecessary. After the birth, the friends and relatives of the mother visit her, and offer their congratulations. ”