sabotage ; There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,

sabotage

See definition in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

Line breaks: sabo|tage

Pronunciation: /ˈsabətɑːʒ/ 

Definition of sabotage in English:

verb

[WITH OBJECT]

Deliberately destroy, damage, or obstruct (something), especially for political or military advantage:power lines from South Africa were sabotaged by rebel forces

noun

[MASS NOUN]Back to top  

The action of sabotaging something:a coordinated campaign of sabotage

MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCESSYNONYMS

Origin

Early 20th century: from French, from saboter 'kick with sabots, wilfully destroy' (see sabot).

sabotLine breaks: sabot

Pronunciation: /ˈsabəʊ/ 

Definition of sabot in English:

noun

1A kind of simple shoe, shaped and hollowed out from a single block of wood, traditionally worn by French and Breton peasants.

2A device which ensures the correct positioning of a bullet or shell in the barrel of a gun, attached either to the projectile or inside the barrel and falling away as it leaves the muzzle.

EXAMPLE SENTENCES

3A box from which cards are dealt at casinos in gambling games such as baccarat and chemin de fer. Also called shoe.

sabot

[名]1 （フランス・ベルギーなどの農夫がはく）木靴.2 サボ：木底靴.3 《軍事》（縮射用）送弾筒；（対戦車用）高速徹甲弾用の装弾筒.［フランス語←中フランス語savate（古い靴）. vat...

sabotage

[名][U]1 サボタージュ.(1)故意に工場の機械・設備に損傷を与え生産を遅滞させる行為.(2)戦時中の

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It might help to have some of the context from the Kipling poem In the Neolithic Age:

I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.
...
But a rival, of Solutré [a neolithic site in France], told the tribe my style was outré
-- By a hammer, grooved of dolomite, he fell.
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged below the heart
Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle [a paleolithic site].
Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting-dogs fed full,
And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dead,
For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong."
But my Totem [animal sacred to the poet's tribe] saw the shame; from his ridgepole-shrine he came,
And he told me in a vision of the night: --
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
"And every single one of them is right!"

The poet ("singer" to his clan) takes a stone ax (dolomite hammer) to a rival who dares criticize his style, shoots another rival artist, a cave painter, with an arrow ("barbed and tanged"), and goes on a general rampage against artists who disagree with him. Eventually his tribal totem tells the poet in a vision that there are any number of right ways to construct the tribal narratives (i.e., the tribal lays).

A bit late for the Stone Age artistic community that the narrator has laid waste to.

lay 3

See definition in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary

Line breaks: lay

Pronunciation: /leɪ/ 

noun

1A short lyric or narrative poem meant to be sung:a minstrel recited a series of lays

1.1literary A song:on his lips there died the cheery lay