Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/234

216 to stomp, contrasting in their violence or clumsy weight with the foot on the Dorset cottage-sill in Barnes's poem: —

'Where love do seek the maïden's evenèn vloor, Wi' stip-step light, an tip-tap slight Ageän the door.'

By expanding, modifying, or, so to speak, colouring, sound is able to produce effects closely like those of gesture-language, expressing length or shortness of time, strength or weakness of action, and then passing into a further stage to describe greatness or smallness of size or of distance, and thence making its way into the widest fields of metaphor. And it does all this with a force which is surprising when we consider how childishly simple are the means employed. Thus the Bachapin of Africa call a man with the cry héla! but according as he is far or farther off the sound of the ''hêela! hê-ê-la!'' is lengthened out. Mr. Macgregor in his 'Rob Roy on the Jordan,' graphically describes this method of expression, '"But where is Zalmouda?" ... Then with rough eagerness the strongest of the Dowana faction pushes his long forefinger forward, pointing straight enough — but whither? and with a volley of words ends, Ah-ah-a-a-a——a-a. This strange expression had long before puzzled me when first heard from a shepherd in Bashan. ... But the simple meaning of this long string of "ah's" shortened, and quickened, and lowered in tone to the end, is merely that the place pointed to is a "very great way off."' The Chinook Jargon, as usual representing primitive developments of language, uses a similar device in lengthening the sound of words to indicate distance. The Siamese can, by varying the tone-accent, make the syllable non, 'there,' express a near, indefinite, or far distance, and in like manner can modify the meaning of such a word as ny, 'little.' In the Gaboon, the strength with which such a word as mpolu, 'great,' is uttered serves to show whether it is great, very great, or very very great, and in this way, as Mr. Wilson remarks in his Mpongwe Grammar, 'the