Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/270

 254 Balochi Folklore,

is held upright like a violoncello, and played with a horse- hair bow.^

Another instrument, the nar or pipe, is used for accom- panying the short love-songs known as dastdnagh, to which I shall allude later. The style of singing with the nar ac- companiment is peculiar to the hill-tribes. The singer and player sit on the ground with their heads close together, and the singer drops his voice to the pitch of the instru- ment, which seemed to me to be an octave below the natural voice. He takes a long breath and sings the whole song through in one breath, ending with a deep gasp when exhausted, the voice seeming to proceed from the stomach. The effect is very peculiar, but not at all disagreeable, and the accompaniments are very pleasant embroideries on the original air. This style of singing is never used for the long ballads, which are accompanied on the stringed in- struments.

The poem often begins with an invocation to the minstrel, addressed as " sweet singing Lori," to bring forth his instrument and sing; the instrument being alluded to by the name of the wood it is made of, either the phdrpugk (Tecoma) or the Shdgh (Grewia). Then the song com- mences a ballad, perhaps of recent tribal wars or one of the old heroic ballads of the Balochi Iliad, the great thirty years' war between the Rinds and Lasharis over the fair Gohar, the Helen of the tale. She was the mistress of great herds of camels, and Mir Chakar, the Rind Chief, and Gwaharam, the Lashari Chief, contended for her hand. Gohar pre- ferred Chakar, and there was wrath among the Lasharis, but the final outbreak was brought about by the incident of the horse-race. Two young chiefs, one on each side, backed their mares for a prize, a fat sheep belonging to a Mochi, and the Rinds by trickery made out that their champion had won. It is worth notice, that though most of the

' The sarinda sometimes has sympathetic wires under the gut strings, like the Indian sarangi.