SEVEN SHEEP

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 138, 6 August 1941, Page 3

SEVEN SHEEP

GUT FOR ONE TENNIS RACQUET Five million yards of British music strings arc shipped every year from London to countries as far apart as Iceland and the Fiji Islands and not one cargo has been caught by U-boats or floating mines. New Zealand is the land of the 'cello. This is shown by, the preponderance of 'cello strings among the consignments sent there. South Africa prefers fretted instruments; while Australia, and not Ireland, has the most harpists. Making music strings is a craftsman's job, whether they be of plain gut, silk steel or covcrcd with metal wire. As far as gut goes, the Briti ish tradition runs back to the media-' cval lute, the bows used at Crecy find Agincourt, and the racquet with which Henry VIII played "real" tennis at Hampton Court. Gut comes from the inside oi sheep bred on the far mist-drenched hills of Scotland where their hardy, frugal lives develop strong membranes; gives them, in short, "guts." ft takes the insides of seven sheep tc make one tennis racquet, but o Single sheep, with 25 yards of gut, will produce six A strings for a violin. Before the war Britain was already exporting strings, to Germany and Italy, where the making of musical Instruments flourished. British crafts men are as adept in making string.", for unusual instruments like the Colombian tiple, the Arabian aoud ,>nd the Chinese mandolin, as for the members of the violin family and the popular fretted instruments like the {Juilnr. The harp is a particularly difficult Icb. It has six octaves and each string has to be chosen separately.