The Music of Hindostan c6.18

c6.18

A common use of song is to give words of command to domesticated animals. At a well at Poona the water was drawn by a skin let down by two ropes. When the skin reached the water one rope was slacked and the mouth of the skin opened. The cattle marched slowly down an incline, pulling on the ropes, and, as soon as the contents of the skin had been emptied into the trough which carried the water out over a neighbouring field, backed again up the incline a little slower still. When the well-man started them down he sang and when, after a minute's interval he backed them up again, he sang