The Life of the Grasshopper 



What are we to make of this oat-straw, 

 this frail shepherd's pipe, as they used to 

 make us translate it in my young days? Did 

 the poet write avena tenui by way of a 

 rhetorical figure, or was he describing a 

 reality? I vote for the reality, having my- 

 self in the old days heard a concert of shep- 

 herd's pipes. 



It was in Corsica, at Ajaccio. In gratitude 

 for a handful of sugar-plums, some small 

 boys of the neighbourhood came one day 

 and serenaded me. Quite unexpectedly, in 

 gusts of untutored harmony, strange sounds 

 of rare sweetness reached my ears. I ran 

 to the window. There stood the orchestra, 

 none taller than a jack-boot, gathered sol- 

 emnly in a ring, with the leader in the middle. 

 Most of them had at their lips a green onion- 

 stem, distended spindlewise; others a stubble 

 straw, a bit of reed not yet hardened by 

 maturity. 



They blew into these, or rather they sang 

 a vocero, to a grave measure, perhaps a 

 relic of the Greeks. Certainly, it was not 

 music as we understand it; still less was it a 

 meaningless noise; but it was a vague, un- 

 dulating melody, abounding in artless irregu- 

 larities, a medley of pretty sounds in which 



250 



