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Show 200 BUREAU OP AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [ BULL. 75 RUDIMENTARY SONGS The repetitions of the preceding songs show them to be entities, having a beginning and ending, and clearly remembered by the singer. The following material is different and may be called " the stuff of which songs are made." It has no definite ending and the performance could probably have been continued indefinitely. The transcription is closed at a convenient point in the melody. A rhythmic feeling is evident, but there is no repeated unit of rhythm except in the first song. The melodic formation is largely on a major triad. It appears as though the tones of a major triad were in the singer's consciousness and he made combinations of these and other tones as suited his fancy. The intonation on the octave, or boundary of the melody, was reasonably good, the fifth was somewhat less assured, and in many instances the other intervals can be indicated only approximately by musical notation. The several singers had no hesitation in beginning the songs, seeming as familiar with this variable form of musical expression as younger singers with the conventional song. The three old women who recorded these songs were in the room at the same time and each seemed to concur in the others' performance. There was no opportunity to learn whether they could duplicate these performances at a later time, but it seems extremely doubtful that they could have done so with any degree of exactness. It was said that the accompanying stories were narrated to the music. Thus, if the narrator changed the words of the story, he would probably vary the music accordingly. All these stories are about animals, and we note in the music a suggestion of the characteristic of the animals, though this comparison can not safely be pressed too far. In song ( a), which is said to have been sung by the prairie dogs, the tempo is rapid and the movement of the melody can be described as agile. Song ( b) also is in rapid tempo and concerns a race between the tadpoles and the mice. In song ( c) the motion of the story is less marked, but the tempo of the song is the same as in song ( a). Only a portion of the cylinder is transcribed, as the phrases after the change of time were repeated over and over with slight changes that are not interesting. Song ( d) presents a much slower tempo and a heavier type of melody. The accompanying story is that of the bear who stole the wolf's wife. In this, as in song ( c), a large part of the phonographic cylinder contains only the phrases which appear in the latter part of the transcription and which are repeated in varied but unimportant forms. Wiyu'tS ( pi. 11, S), an aged woman who recorded the first three of these songs, said that she learned them from her mother up in the canyon. When she was a little girl her mother sang them to her and told her of the time when " the wolves were people." That was |