Note 154 — Chapter III · CONDUCT IN CAPTIVITY.

The principal sound by which the mahouts in Ceylon direct the motions of the elephants is a repetition, with various modulations, of the words ur-re! ur-re! This is one of those interjections in which the sound is so expressive of the sense that persons in charge of animals of almost every description throughout the world appear to have adopted it with a concurrence that is very curious. The drivers of camels in Turkey, Palestine, and Egypt encourage them to speed by shouting ar-ré! ar-ré! The Arabs in Algeria cry eirich! to their mules. The Moors seem to have carried the custom with them into Spain, where mules are still driven with cries of arré (whence the muleteers derive their Spanish appellation of “arrieros”). In France the sportsman excites the hound by shouts of hare! hare! and the waggoner there turns his horses by his voice, and the use of the word hurhaut! In the North, “Hurs was a word used by the old Germans in urging their horses to speed:” and Sir Francis Head, in his Bubbles from the Brunnens, describes the Schwin-General shouting “ariff” to his pigs...“ariff! vociferated the old man, striding after one of his rebellious subjects; ariff! re-echoed his boy striding after another.” (P.94.)

To the present day, the herdsmen in Ireland, and parts of Scotland, drive their pigs with shouts of hurrish! a sound closely resembling that used by the mahouts in Ceylon.