Page:Essays on the Chinese Language (1889).djvu/153

139 is ku, and the name was perhaps given to represent the sound made by the primitive drum when beaten with a stick. The Chinese do not commonly say that the drum "sounds" or "rolls," but they say it t‘ong-t‘ong, or kiai-kiai, or pêng-pêng. "Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife." In Chinese the fife is called ti (笛), and this name also is perhaps derived from its sound.

Let us now pass on to notice some of those words and expressions made to imitate or suggest the calls, cries, and other sounds produced by birds, beasts, and insects. These, it will be seen, are often the rude matter out of which true speech is formed, and not seldom they are themselves actual grammatical terms. In Chinese, as in other languages, such expressions often give their names to animals, especially to birds and insects. The old popular poetry found in the "Shi-ching" and the "Ku-shi-yuan" affords many examples of these attempts to imitate or recall in language the inarticulate utterances made by the brute creatures, and these in many cases are still well known and used in common literature. The first poem of the "Shi-ching" begins, Kuan-kuan the chü-chiu. Dr. Legge renders the line rather funnily by "kuan-kuan go the ospreys," where the word "go" is not needed. The chü-chiu are rather wild duck or wild geese than ospreys, and the poet says, "The wild duck quack-quack." By this he means to express that in the flock every drake has his duck, that they pair for life, and that drake and duck quack and dilly in loving harmony. In the same treatise we find yao-yao (or yu-yu) as the noise made by locusts or "grass insects," and the harmonious call of deer; huang-huang the noise made by a swarm of locusts; ao-ao (or gao-gao) as the melancholy cry of wild geese; suh-suh the rustling of the geese's wings; ying-ying and mien-man as the notes of certain birds. We find the same imitative sounds applied to different creatures, including man, and we find the call or sound made by one animal represented by several different sounds. The songs of birds and the stridulations of insects do not sound alike to all ears. In England, for example, to one the nightingale sings whit, whit,