The Sakais like music but nearly always the notes are accompanied by a dancing movement, sometimes lightly as if to mark the time, but at others they kick their legs about so furiously, at the same time twisting and writhing their bodies in such a strange series of contortions that an uninitiated looker-on would surely receive the impression that they were suffering from spasmodic pains in the stomach, whereas in reality they are only imitating the wriggling of a serpent.
The woman is particularly fond of dancing and with it she measures the cadencies of her own songs and gives point to the words themselves whilst her companions repeat a sort of chorus which completes the musical passage.
Playing the "ciniloi".
p. [178].
It must not be thought, however, that song as it is known among the Sakais is the melodious sound we are in the habit of considering as such. With them it is an emission of notes, generally guttural ones which are capriciously alternated without any variety of tune and which in their integrity fail to express any musical thought.
The women sing with greater monotony, but more sweetly, than the men. Often they join in groups singing and dancing, and this, I believe, is the gayest moment of their lives and to this honest pleasure they will abandon themselves with rapture, forgetting the fatigue of the day. Then feminine coquetry triumphs before the other girls and the young men.
When night falls the air becomes cool, and even cold later on. Having finished their evening meal the old folk and the children stretch themselves out to sleep round the fire which is always kept lighted. The women sit about weaving bags, mats and hats, their work illuminated by flaring torches composed of sticks and leaves covered with the resin found in the forest. To the extent permitted by their poor language they chat and jest among themselves, laughing noisily the while.
The young men are scattered around preparing their arrows for the next day's hunt, dipping them into the poisonous decoction when it is well heated.