Fig. 16.—Pottery Whistles. Ancient Mexican. British Museum.
The Mexicans possessed a small whistle formed of baked clay, a considerable number of which have been found. Some specimens ([Fig. 16]) are singularly grotesque in shape, representing caricatures of the human face and figure, birds, beasts, and flowers. Some were provided at the top with a finger-hole which, when closed, altered the pitch of the sound, so that two different tones were producible on the instrument. Others had a little ball of baked clay lying loose inside the air-chamber. When the instrument was blown the current of air set the ball in a vibrating motion,
thereby causing a shrill and whirring sound. A similar contrivance is sometimes made use of by Englishmen for conveying signals. The Mexican whistle most likely served principally the same purpose, but it may possibly have been used also in musical entertainments. In the Russian horn band each musician is restricted to a single tone; and similar combinations of performers—only, of course, much more rude—have been witnessed by travellers among some tribes in Africa and America.
Rather more complete than the above specimens are some of the whistles and small pipes which have been found in graves of the Indians of Chiriqui in Central America.
The pipe of the Aztecs, which is called by the Mexican Spaniards pito, somewhat resembled our flageolet: the material was a reddish pottery, and it was provided with four linger holes. Although among about half a dozen specimens which the writer has examined some are considerably larger than others, they all have, singularly enough, the same pitch of sound. The smallest is about six inches in length, and the largest about nine inches. Several pitos have been found in a remarkably well-preserved condition. They are easy to blow, and their order of intervals is in conformity with the pentatonic scale, thus:
The usual shape of the pito is that here represented ([Fig. 17a & c]). A specimen of a less common shape, is given in [Fig. 17b]. They are all in the British Museum. Indications suggestive of the popular estimation in which the flute (or perhaps, more strictly speaking, the pipe) was held by the Aztecs are not wanting. It was played in religious observances, and we find it referred to allegorically in orations delivered on solemn occasions. For instance, at the religious festival which was held in honour of Tezcatlepoca—a divinity depicted as a handsome youth, and considered second only to the supreme being—a young man was sacrificed who, in preparation for the ceremony, had been instructed in the art of playing the flute. Twenty days before his death four young girls, named after the principal goddesses, were given to him as companions; and when the hour arrived in which he was to be sacrificed he observed the established symbolical rite of breaking a flute on each of the steps, as he ascended the temple.
Fig. 17.—Pitos (flageolets of pottery).
a. and c. Ancient Mexican.
b. From the Island of Sacrificios.
British Museum.