Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/284

268 betrothed to a relation of the Leghāri Chief; but at the last moment the engagement was broken off, and the girl married to a Leghāri living in Bahāwalpur across the Indus. This Leghāri was promptly killed by some Gurchānis and a renegade Leghāri, and although the Chief's complicity could not be proved, there was no moral doubt of it; and it was so generally believed that I found it necessary to recommend Government to deprive him of his powers as a magistrate and judge—a very serious matter with the chief of a tribe. War broke out between the independent sections of the tribes living in the hills, and years passed before the affair had blown over. Even now I should not be surprised to hear of its breaking out afresh. Feuds regarding women are frequent and severe, and are difficult to deal with. Love among the Baloches is, I believe, more spiritual and less gross in its manifestations than among most Oriental races, and the tone of the numerous love-poems is often of a genuinely romantic character. I may allude to the story and poem of Dostèn and Shirèn, of which I have published a translation; the poems of Jām Durrak, some of which also I have translated; Réhān's lament over the death of Salo and Bivaragh's love-song, both translated by the Rev. T. J. Mayer; and others still untranslated which I have in MS.

The little poems called dastānagh, of a few lines only, which are sung to a flute accompaniment, are often of this type. The following are a few examples, but I need not say that they lose a great deal in translation:

Wandering maid, I am on thy track, For three years past I am on thy track, I am lame with wandering on thy track, A pain in my breast, I am on thy track. A fool in my heart, I am on thy track, Hopeless in soul, but on thy track.