SILENCE AND MUSIC 149 



What strikes me as the most curious and interesting 

 point about their singing — their loYe of high-pitched 

 voices, and, in many of their ballads, their go-as-you- 

 please tuneless tuneful manner, with the prolonging of 

 some notes at random and " bleating out of goatish 

 noises" — is its resemblance to the singing of the 

 Basques, which is perhaps the most primitive kind 

 of vocal music that survives in Europe. This Basque 

 singing in its turn strongly reminds me of all the 

 Indians' singing I have heard in South America, 

 including that of the Tehuelches — the Patagonian 

 nomad race. The Gauchos of the Pampas, too, have 

 inherited something of that manner of singing from 

 their progenitors, or else have caught it from the 

 aborigines. The Basques and the red men, like our 

 Sussexians, are fond of shrillness and acute sounds, 

 but do not, like the East Indians, cultivate falsetto. 



I have described the sweetest, most musical voice 

 heard in Sussex as that of a young girl in the downs ; 

 another downland girl's voice was one of the acutest 

 carrying voices I ever heard in my life. She was 

 shepherding (a rare thing for a girl to do) on the 

 very high downs between Stanmer and Westmeston ; 

 and for two or three days during my rambles among 

 the hUls in that neighbourhood I constantly heard her 

 oft-repeated calls and long piercing cries sounding 

 wonderfully loud and distinct even at a distance of 

 two miles and more away. It was like the shrill 

 echoing cries of some clear-voiced big bird — some 



