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Chapter Twenty-two. Love and Poetry |
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absence of working chants |
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A curious gap in the range of Konyak songs is the absence of working chants. Nagas of most other tribes sing at work on the fields or when carrying loads, and in the Angami country at planting time the work songs of boys and girls resound from all rice-terraces and fill the valleys from morning to evening. The Konyaks, on the other hand, do not sing at work: when they drag in a huge house-pole it is to rhythmic yells and shouts, and young people weeding the hill-crops will break into cascades of laughter and shrieks but never into song. |
