My life's a maze of seeming traps, A scene of mercies and mishaps; A heap of jarring to and fros, A field of joys, A field of woes.

Which of these do you want to keep?

In a culture dependent upon oral traditions going back to the griots—tribal historians and genealogists—of Western Africa, the heroes of the toast were often the ultimate bad mammyjammers, the archetypes of motherfuckerdom.

[U]niuſtly thou doeſt vvyte them all, / For that vvhich thou miſlikedſt in a fevv.