376
LIFE
AND VOYAGES
OF
[BOOK
VI.
lads, handed down from generation to generation, in which were rehearsed the deeds of their ancestors. “ These rhymes or bal lads," he adds, “ they call areytos; and as our minstrels are accus tomed to sing to the harp and lute, so do they in like manner sing these songs, and dance to the same, playing on timbrels made of shells of certain
fishes.
These timbrels they call maguey.
They have also songs and ballads of love, and others of lamen tation or mourning; some also to encourage them to the wars, all sung to tunes agreeable to the matter."
It was for these dances,
as has been already observed, that they were so eager to procure hawks' bells, suspending them about their persons, and keeping time with their sound to the cadence of the singers.
This mode
of dancing to a ballad has been compared to the dances of the peasants in Flanders during the summer, and to those prevalent throughout Spain to the sound of the castinets, and the wild popu lar chants said to be derived from the Moors ; but which, in fact, existed before their invasion, among the Goths who overran the peninsula.* The earliest history of almost all nations has generally been preserved by rude heroic rhymes and ballads, and by the lays of the minstrels; and such was the case with the areytos of the Indians. “ When a cacique died," says Oviedo, “ they sang in dirges his life and actions, and all the good that he had done was recollected.
Thus they formed the ballads or areytos which con
stituted their history.”† Some of these ballads were of a sacred character, containing their traditional notions of theology, and the superstitions and fables which comprised their religious creeds. None were permitted to sing these but the sons of caciques, who * Mariana, Hist. Esp., lib. v. cap. 1. † Oviedo, Cron. de las Indias, lib. v. cap. 3.