lo RUSTIC SOUNDS 



great flights of birds migrating at night, one of the 

 most romantic of sounds, but to me untranslatable, 

 since I do not know the language of these wanderers. 



I come now to human sounds. It was exciting 

 to wake at 5 o'clock some morning in June, and to 

 learn by the sound of scythes being whetted 

 that the mowers had arrived, and that the hay 

 harvest had actually begun. The field had been a 

 great sea of tall grasses, pink with sorrel and white 

 with dog-daisies, a sacred sea into which we might 

 not enter. But now we could at least follow the 

 mowers, and watch the growth of the tracks made 

 by their shifting feet, and Hsten to the swish of the 

 scythes as the swathes of fallen grass and flowers 

 also grew in length. There was something mihtary 

 in their rhythm, and something relentless and 

 machine-like in their persistence. But our admir- 

 ation was mixed with pity from the time that 

 one of them told us that after the first day's mowing 

 he was too tired to sleep. In later years another 

 sound was associated with haymaking, when in an 

 Alpine meadow the group of resting peasants were 

 heard hammering the blades of their Httle pre- 

 Raphaelite scythes to flatten the dents made by 

 stones hidden among the grass. 



A well-remembered sound that came near 

 che end of the harvest was the cry of "Stand 

 fast ! " which was heard at intervals warning 

 the man in the cart, whose duty it was to 

 arrange the pitched-up hay, that a move was to be 

 made. Why it was necessary to shout the warning 

 so that it could be heard a quarter of a mile away 

 I cannot say. But its impressive effect depended 



