Song of sorrow
Awell-meaning citizen of Cape Town once gave the governor’s son a beautiful flute to play, thinking he was doing the boy a good service. However, it turned out that the flute was infected with leprosy – it had been played by a man with the disease. The bacteria passed to the boy who was then forced to live in exile because there was no cure, and people believed leprosy was highly contagious. He lived alone in a hut among the woodland glades of Table Mountain. Even today, people claim to hear the sorrowful tunes from his flute carried by the wind across the mountain’s slopes.