In Mr. Lyndon Harries's ‘Popular Verse of the Swahili Tradition’, published in Africa, April 1952, there appears a poem ‘The Song of the Poor Man’, taken from Muhammad Kijuma's collection of manuscripts made early in the present century. It might be of interest to students of Swahili to compare it with a version from Siu, which was recently dictated to me by a native of Siu and checked with another native of the same place. These two depended solely on memory and had no written record-to assist them.