Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/200

182 suggests the Norman original of the English tally-ho! With cries of this kind plain French words are intermixed, ''hà bellement là ila, là ila, hau valet! — hau l'ami, tau tau après après, à route à route!'' and so on. And sometimes words have broken down into calls whose sense is not quite gone, like the 'vois le ci' and the 'vois le ce l'est' which are still to be distinguished in the shout which is to tell the hunters that the stag they have been chasing has made a return, vauleci revari vaulecelez! But the drollest thing in the treatise is the grave set of English words (in very Gallic shape) with which English dogs are to be spoken to, because, as the author says, 'there are many English hounds in France, and it is difficult to get them to work when you speak to them in an unknown tongue, that is, in other terms than they have been trained to.' Therefore, to call them, the huntsman is to cry here do-do ho ho! to get them back to the right track he is to say houpe boy, houpe boy! when there are several on ahead of the rest of the pack, he is to ride up to them and cry ''saf me boy! saf me boy! and lastly, if they are obstinate and will not stop, he is to make them go back with a shout of cobat, cobat!''

How far the lower animals may attach any inherent meaning to interjectional sounds is a question not easy to answer. But it is plain that in most of the cases mentioned here they only understand them as recognized signals which have a meaning by regular association, as when they remember that they are fed with one noise and driven away with another, and they also pay attention to the gestures which accompany the cries. Thus the well-known Spanish way of calling the cat is miz miz! while zape zape! is used to drive it away; and the writer of an old dictionary maintains that there can be no real difference between these words except by custom, for, he declares, he has heard that in a certain monastery where they kept very handsome cats, the brother in charge of the refectory hit upon the device of calling zape zape! to them when he gave them