77. Songs.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Russell, R. V. (Robert Vane)
All the time they are dancing they also sing in unison, the men sometimes singing one line and the women the next, or both together. The songs are with few exceptions of an erotic character, and a few specimens are subjoined.
a. Be not proud of your body, your body must go away above (to death).
Your mother, brother and all your kinsmen, you must leave them and go.
You may have lakhs of treasure in your house, but you must leave it all and go.
b. The musicians play and the feet beat on the earth.
A pice (¼d.) for a divorced woman, two pice for a kept woman, for a virgin many sounding rupees.
The musicians play and the earth sounds with the trampling of feet.
c. Rāja Darwa is dead, he died in his youth.
Who is he that has taken the small gun, who has taken the big bow?
Who is aiming through the harra and bahera trees, who is aiming on the plain?
Who has killed the quail and partridge, who has killed the peacock?
Rāja Darwa has died in the prime of his youth.
The big brother says, ‘I killed him, I killed him’; the little brother shot the arrow.
Rāja Darwa has died in the bloom of his youth.
d. Rāwan56 is coming disguised as a Bairāgi; by what road will Rāwan come?
The houses and castles fell before him, the ruler of Bhānwargarh rose up in fear.
He set the match to his powder, he stooped and crept along the ground and fired.
e. Little pleasure is got from a kept woman; she gives her lord pej (gruel) of kutki to drink.
She gives it him in a leaf-cup of laburnum;57 the cup is too small for him to drink.
She put two gourds full of water in it, and the gruel is so thin that it gives him no sustenance.