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Updated: May 29, 2025
Then he was out; and a moment later the two-stringed fiddle whined a little song through two closed doors. I said something acute and original about the ingrained fatalism of the Oriental races. Ma Pettengill laid down her paper, put aside her glasses, and said, yes, Chinee one fatal race; feeling fatal thataway was what made 'em such good help. Because why?
It would seem like a preposterous idea to invite people to dance the Russian jig in a room which was too low to permit a man of average stature to stand upright; but it did not seem at all so to these enthusiastic pleasure-seekers in Gizhiga, and night after night they would go hopping around a seven-by-nine room to the music of a crazy fiddle and a two-stringed guitar, stepping on one another's toes and bumping their heads against the ceiling with the most cheerful equanimity imaginable.
This is his way. Not the least furtive lightening of his subtle eyes hinted that I had pleased him. He presently withdrew to his tiny room off the kitchen, where, as was his evening custom for half an hour, he coaxed an amazing number of squealing or whining notes from his two-stringed fiddle. I pictured him as he played.
The Performer nearest them was running a slow bass scale on a sort of two-stringed horse-fiddle of a strange shape. Average Jones' still untouched glass, almost full of the precious port, trembled and sang a little tentative response. Up-up-up mounted the thrilling notes, in crescendo force. "What a racking sort of tone, for all its sweetness!" said Average Jones.
The musicians with three-fingered pipes and two-stringed violins are drawn up in the centre of the ring, when each gallant placing his arms under those of the damsels on either side, and interlacing his fingers with theirs, they all move slowly around in the immense circle, singing at the same time a sort of accompaniment to the instrumental music, swinging the body gracefully backwards and forwards, and rising on the toes in such a way as to communicate an undulating motion to the whole ring as it goes round.
Mesaôd, the one-eyed, had finished an elaborate tuning of his two-stringed banjo, his ginbri a home-made instrument and was proceeding to arrive at a convenient pitch of voice for his song. With a strong nasal accent he commenced reciting the loves of Si Marzak and his fair Azîzah: how he addressed her in the fondest of language, and how she replied by caresses.
Long before we sighted Sandy Hook, I will admit, I was fairly sick of Charles's two-stringed harp Mrs. Quackenboss and the dispatch-box. Mrs. Quackenboss, it turned out, was an amateur artist, and she painted Sir Charles, on calm days on deck, in all possible attitudes. She seemed to find him a most attractive model. The doctor, too, was a precious clever fellow.
Less pretentious "professors" are content with themselves manipulating a round or square tambourine or a two-stringed fiddle, and to many this style has a peculiar charm of its own. Each pause, however slight, is marked by two or three sharp beats on the tightly stretched skin, or twangs with a palmetto leaf plectrum, loud or soft, according to the subject of the discourse at that point.
We now left the carriage, and strolled to see the people, the shops, and the market. I bought all sorts of common curiosities, little articles of everyday life, some of which will be sure to amuse and interest my English friends. Among my purchases were a wooden pillow, some joss candles, a two-stringed fiddle, and a few preserved eggs, which they say are over a hundred years old.
Other instruments are formed by broad metallic bars, supported on strings stretched across frames; and others again of strips of bamboo similarly placed and producing the highest notes. Besides these there were a flute and a curious two-stringed violin, requiring in all twenty-four performers.
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