SEVEN SHEEP.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 208, 4 August 1941, Page 2

SEVEN SHEEP.

GUT FOIt TENNIS RACQUET. LONDON, July 1. Five million yards of British music strings are 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 covered with metal wire. As far as gut goes, the British tradition runs back to the mediaeval lute, the bows used at Crecy and Agincourt, and the racquet with which Henry VIII played “real” tennis at Hampton Court. Gut comes from the inside of sheep bred on the far mist-drenched hills of Scotland where their hardy, frugal lives develop strong membranes; gives them, in short, “guts.” It takes the insides of seven sheep to make one tennis racquet, but a single sheep, with ■ 2o yards of gut. will produce six AI strings for a violin. | Before the war Britain was already; exporting strings to Germany and,' Italy, where the making of musical in-' strumentrs flourished. British crafts-! men arc as adept in making strings lor unusual instruments like the Colombian tiple, the Arabian aoud. and the Chinese mandolin as for the members of the violin family and the popular fretted instruments like the guitar. The harp is a particularly difficult job. It has six octaves and each string has to be chosen separately.