Gourd

“ Do not be afraid of the great birds that stand on either side of the gourd, they are not real birds, only wooden birds; they are plaited with straw and inwrought with feathers. And when you come to where the gourd is standing take off the cover, then put your head into the mouth of the gourd and call out the name of the gourd, 'Laukapalili, Trembling Leaf, give me wisdom.' Then you shall see your sister and all that is happening below. ”

“ Plodding from one bearing plant to another, the Indian stops at each long enough to uncover the cavity in its crown, press the smaller end of the gourd to its bottom and, by sucking at the upper end, draw into the lower part of the gourd the exuded sap, and thrust the gourd over his shoulder into the pig-skin bag on his back—his finger meantime stopping the upper hole so that the fluid may not run out until he wishes it to. A quick scraping of the cavity follows, the stone or other cover is replaced, and he passes on. Sometimes he trudges home with his burden as often as the pig-skin is filled ”

“ Each morning, just as the rising sun lit up the eastern sky, young and old came out of their houses, the older ones carrying empty gourds with the dry seeds inside. At a signal from the high priest, a solemn droning chant was struck up, to the monotonous time kept by the numerous gourd rattles. As the sun rose higher and higher, the chanting grew louder and louder, and the echoes of "He! he! he! ha! ha! ha! laima! laima!" were repeated by the distant hills. When the altar of incense (described later) was illuminated by the sun-god, the chanting ceased. ”

“ I abode thus a long while in the utmost wretchedness, hourly beseeching God the Most High that I might die, for stress of weariness and misery, till one day I came to a place wherein was abundance of gourds, many of them dry. So I took a great dry gourd and cutting open the neck, scooped out the inside and cleaned it; after which I gathered grapes from a vine that grew hard by and squeezed them into the gourd till it was full of the juice. ”

“ The gourd withered the next day after it sprang up; our comforts come forth like flowers and are soon cut down. When we please ourselves most with them, and promise ourselves most from them, we are disappointed. A little thing withers them; a small worm at the root destroys a large gourd. Something unseen and undiscerned does it. Our gourds wither, and we know not what to attribute it to. And perhaps those wither first that we have been more exceedingly glad of; that proves least safe that is most dear. God did not send an angel to pluck up Jonah's gourd, but sent a worm to smite it ”

“ The seeds are dried by being placed in the shade, and when wanted for sowing, are steeped in water first. The longer and thinner the gourd is, the more agreeable it is to the palate, and hence it is that those which have been left to grow hanging are reckoned the most wholesome: these, too, have fewer seeds than the others, the hardness of which is apt to render the fruit less agreeable for eating. ”

“ It is at this hungry time that the pumpkins and gourds come in, and the first ears of green maize from the dimba patches of rich, damp soil by the stream-sides are eagerly looked for. Several sorts of cucumbers and marrows are cultivated, and some grow wild, or half wild; one small round gourd is a really delicious vegetable, almost equal to our custard-marrows. ”

“ A tangle of massive foliage springs from one knows not where, large leaves that dwarf all else elbow their way to the front, and here and there in their midst a big yellow gourd comfortably rests on a stone cornice or on an artificial prop. ”

“ The gourd is a kind of squash, hollowed out, in which from thirteen to twenty-four pipes of bamboo or metal are inserted; each one of these pipes contains a metal reed, the vibration of which causes the sound. Below the reed are cut small holes in the pipes, and there is a pipe with a mouthpiece to keep the gourd, which is practically an air reservoir, full of air. ”

“ He cleared the vines away, wondering if she approved his industry. He explored the woods until he found a plant on which gourds had dried. He kicked one, broke off the neck, filled it at the pool. There were no signs of her people. The gourd did not leak at all as he carried it back.
She had divided the fish in half, skinned and boned it less wastefully than he had the other. She was able to work at the table now, though with some difficulty. Tall as a very small woman she yet retained the tantalizing, provocative, shameful appeal of her original size. He set the gourd down shakily. ”

“ The gourd, then, to begin at the beginning, is of course a cucumber by family, belonging to the same great group of rapidly growing and large-leaved climbers as the melon, the pumpkin, and the vegetable marrow. All these plants are mere annuals, and they are remarkable among their class for the stature they attain in a single year, for the size of their leaves, and for the bigness of the fruit, in comparison with the short time it takes in growing. Only the sunflower and Indian corn can equal them at all in this last respect. Vegetative energy is the strong point of the gourds. ”

“ There is no natural order more wonderful in the variety and singular shapes of its fruit than that to which the melon, cucumber, and vegetable marrow belong. From the writhing Snake-cucumber, which hangs down four or five feet long from its stem, to the round enormous giant pumpkin or gourd, the grotesque variation, both in colour and shape and size, is marvellous. ”

“ Gourds.—The two kinds of vegetable-marrow—the American butter-squash, and the mammoth-gourd, are excellent for the table, either in soup, or boiled, or fried. The plants of all these kinds should be raised in a hotbed, the seeds being sown in March or April, three in a pot, and covered nearly an inch deep. In May, the young plants should be removed to the open ground, where they should be planted in rich soil, and sheltered for a night or two, till they have become inured to the change. They should be frequently watered in dry weather, as the fruit will not swell without abundance of moisture. ”

“ The child's mother, a cadaverous, pale woman, was listlessly stringing the warping-bars with hanks of variegated yarn. The grandmother, who conserved a much more active and youthful interest in life, took down a brown gourd used as a scrap-basket that was on a protruding lath of the clay-and-stick chimney, and hunted among the scraps of homespun and bits of yarn stowed within it. ”

“ Your Gourd connects itself with everything you think, or do, or say, spreading her roots, as it were, over every foot of land you possess, shutting [Pg 62] out earth’s horizon with her slender stem, and, worse than all, poking her dainty head between you and heaven.
“Then, when she withers up—a disappointment which, to do her justice, she is capable of inflicting in the loveliest weather and at the shortest notice—you find to your dismay that, with her, all the fair side of creation has withered too. There is no more freshness in the meadows, no more promise in the smile of spring. ”

“ It grows well in Central Europe and the United States, while in the south of England it will produce its gigantic fruit in perfection in hot summers. The yellow flesh of this gourd and its numerous varieties yields a considerable amount of nutriment, and is the more valuable as the fruit can be kept, even in warm climates, for a long time. In France and in the East it is much used in soups and ragouts, while simply boiled it forms a substitute for other table vegetables; the taste has been compared to that of a young carrot. In some countries the larger kinds are employed as cattle food. ”

“ Its one noteworthy peculiarity lies in its hard, coriaceous, and shining rind, far more woody in character than even that of its near allies the pumpkins and the calabashes. This peculiarity, again, is not without a meaning in the history of the race: it points back with no uncertain finger (why should gourds be denied fingers?) to the subtropical origin of the gourd species. For the bottle-gourd itself, to employ the language most frequently applied to our Aryan brother, is a native of India, though it has long been cultivated for the sake of its fruits round the whole Mediterranean. ”

“ This tree grows to the height of a common apple-tree, with large thick pointed leaves: the gourds it produces are of different forms and dimensions, some being oval, some conical, and some round, growing often to the size of ten or twelve inches in diameter; the shell is hard and very smooth, covered over with a shining skin or epidermis, which becomes brown when the gourd is dry and fit for use: the heart or pulp is a pithy substance, which is easily extricated by the help of a crooked knife. ”

“ Green and yielding, they are plucked from the tree; and emptied of their pulp, are scratched over with minute marks, like those of a line engraving. The ground prepared, the various figures are carefully etched. And the outlines filled up with delicate punctures, certain vegetable oils are poured over them, for coloring. Filled with a peculiar species of earth, the gourd is now placed in an oven in the ground. ”

“ As soon as the flowers have been all fertilized, the male blossoms wither away to nothing; but the small berry underneath the female ones begins to swell out into a big, round fruit with surprising rapidity. Great heat and much sunshine are of course needed in order to produce this startling result with an annual plant; and hence the gourd family consists mostly of luxuriant tropical or subtropical species. Their center of origin would seem to lie in India, where species and individuals are still most numerous. ”

“ The evident and frequent adoption of gourd-shapes in the earthenware of distant parts of the world does not prove much, but as far as it goes it tells in favour of the opinion that such gourd-like vessels may be the successors of real gourds, made into pottery by a plastering of clay. ”

“ The Bundle being displeased, replied, "You will not come to the end." (i. e. you will not have a successful journey.)
The Gourd called him; and he went to the back-yard. The Gourd said to him, "Stand up!" And he stood up. Then the Gourd took a leaf, folded it as a funnel, and dropped a Medicine into his eyes; and he began to see everything clearly. He said, "This is the only thing which I can see that this Hova has done for me." ”

“ The Marutse regard it as being especially choice, and it is double the price of the others.
Maize is very frequently cultivated, and with good success; but there is a still larger preponderance of crops of the gourd tribe, such as various species of water-melons, edible gourds, and bottle gourds, which are only grown for the sake of their shells. ”

“ With a pointed instrument he taps the tree at the crown, and attaches the mouth of a gourd to the aperture, or he takes advantage of the grooved stem of a leaf cut off short to use as a channel for the sap to flow into the gourd suspended below. This operation is performed in the evening, and in the early morning the gourds are brought down with the sap or juice that has collected in them during the night. The palm wine is now a slightly milky fluid, in appearance as nearly as possible like the milk in the ordinary cocoa-nut, having very much the same flavour, only sweeter and more luscious. ”

“ The cultivation of gourds began far beyond the dawn of history, and the esculent species have become so modified by culture that the original plants from which they have descended can no longer be traced. The abundance of varieties in India would seem to indicate that part of Asia as the birthplace of the present edible forms; but some appear to have been cultivated in all the hotter regions of that continent, and in North Africa, from the earliest ages, while the Romans were familiar with at least certain kinds of Cucurbita, and with the bottle-gourd. ”

“ T. W. Harris made the ill-understood edible gourds a special object of study, and devoted particular attention to the ascertaining of the kinds cultivated by the American savages; but his papers have not as yet seen the light. The warted squash (Cucurbita verrucosa, L.) and the orange-gourd (C. aurantium, Willd.) —the fruit of which last is of the size and color of an orange, and “more tender than the common pompion” (Loudon, Encycl. Pl.) —are perhaps, in part, intended by our author.
[209] “Pompions and water-mellons, too, they have good store,” says our author (Voyages, p. 130) ”

“ However all these vegetables and fruits have a tendency to produce constipation, and they ought to be eaten boiled rather than raw. But the Attic writers call the gourd by no other name but κολοκύντη. Hermippus says—
What a huge head he has; it is as big as a gourd!
And Phrynichus, using the diminutive, says—
Will you have a little maize (μάζιον) or gourd (κολοκύντιον) ?
[98] And Epicharmus says—
That is much more wholesome than a gourd (κολοκύντη)
54. ”

“ Cultivation.—The seeds are planted at the same time and in the same manner as those of the Squash. The Gourd succeeds best when provided with a trellis, or other support, to keep the plant from the ground; as the fruit is best developed in a pendent or hanging position.
Use.—The fruit, while still young and tender, is sometimes pickled in vinegar, like cucumbers. At maturity, the flesh is worthless: but the shells, which are very hard, light, and comparatively strong, are used as substitutes for baskets ”

“ A carefully-suspended gourd contains oil from the fruit of another, and the long elastic-plaited cylinder used for squeezing dry the mandiocca pulp to make his bread is of the bark of one of the singular climbing palms which alone can resist for any considerable time the action of the poisonous juice. In each of these cases a species is chosen adapted to the special object to which it is to be applied, and often having different uses which no other plant can serve so well. ”