I am a Primitive Man

Chapter 370: Peeling hemp and love songs competition

"Water gently curves, like your big eyes. Like the round shape before you, the moon in the water calls out. Fish swimming past the moon in the water is like my hand caressing you..."

Alongside the small river of the Sparrow Tribe, where the smell of hemp peeling and washing was strong, there arose a tuneless singing.

Rather than calling it singing, it was more like roaring.

However, the people peeling hemp on the shore were enjoying themselves.

As soon as this nonsensical song ended, someone immediately followed up with another verse: "Black hemp skin is your garment, white hemp stick is your body, I peel off the hemp skin..."

Peeling wet hemp in this season was not pleasant. The most unbearable aspect was not the pungent smell but the cold hands.

After all, staying here for a long time would dull one's sense of smell, making them less sensitive to the odor, akin to the story of the fishmonger who becomes accustomed to the stench of fish.

But they couldn't wear gloves to solve the problem of cold hands while working.

So after doing this kind of work for a while, people's moods became somewhat low.

He didn't sing modern songs but improvised ones, using many metaphors, much like the poems in the Book of Songs.

Of course, Han Cheng's metaphors were all very serious and used as examples to inspire everyone.

This novel approach immediately received unanimous praise.

Inspired by Han Cheng, people improvised songs using similar metaphorical styles and "sang" them.

Compared to Han Cheng's seriousness and subtlety, the metaphors created by the people of the Green Sparrow Tribe were much more direct and explosive.

The two songs they just sang were created by themselves.

Art comes from life, especially primitive and rustic art, which are closely related to life.

The earliest poetry was created from various life situations.

Confucius compiled the Book of Songs, leaving behind three hundred poems passed down through the ages. Among them are famous verses like "Guan guan ju jiu, zai he zhi zhou..." which is a fantasy of the single life, indicating how large the scale of deletion was.

The initial songs of the Sparrow Tribe, with more direct elements, were still acceptable.

As the tribe continues to develop and expand, talented individuals may emerge who, based on this foundation, innovate and create more beautiful and subtle poems.

Originally, the arduous task of peeling hemp now unexpectedly left many people with watery eyes, and two fellows had even sneaked into the nearby bushes. They didn't come out for a while, which was something Han Cheng hadn't anticipated.

Perhaps this program could be preserved and developed into an annual hemp-peeling serenade festival.

When the tribe becomes large enough and the population plentiful, it could evolve into a festival where mature men and women use love songs to find spouses.

Peeling hemp, entertainment, and settling marital matters would all proceed smoothly.

Watching Hei Wa and his wife, picking leaves off each other's hair, Han Cheng envisioned this in his mind.

Following Han Cheng's previous demonstration, the peeled hemp was bundled neatly, one bunch at a time.

Then, someone washed these hemp skins to the riverbank with river water, rinsing off some of the foul-smelling mud and removing impurities that hadn't completely rotted off the fibers. Then, they laid them out to dry on the grassy area by the small river, ready to take them back to the tribe when they returned.

The Shaman twisted some of the hemp, which had only fibers left, into a rope and compared it with a rope made of the same thickness of grass, finding that the rope twisted from hemp was stronger.

He nodded in satisfaction. Regardless of what the Divine Child said about hemp cloth and the clothes made from it, just the fact that ropes twisted from hemp were stronger than those from grass was enough for the tribe to invest so much effort into it.

Piles of stripped hemp stalks endured the sun and cold wind torture here. Their clothes had been ruthlessly taken away by the people of the Green Sparrow Tribe, just like how the Cowherd took away the clothes of the Weaver Girl when she was bathing in the lake.

The difference was that the Cowherd's misbehavior was to get the Weaver Girl to bear him children, while the people of the Sparrow Tribe simply wanted "clothes" made of hemp. After these hemp stalks were dried, they would be used as firewood and burned.

Han Cheng didn't follow his senior brothers and others' suggestions to open and drain the hemp-soaking pits directly, as this would pollute the river.

The Sparrow Tribe still relied on this river for food; if too much sewage were poured into it, it would drive away all the fish. Then what would they eat?

So, after all the hemp was peeled, upon Han Cheng's suggestion, the people of the Sparrow Tribe began to carry the water from the soaking pits to a field not far away that had been cleared for cultivation, using it to fertilize the fields.

The water from the hemp pits soaked many things, making it quite "strong" for use as irrigation water.

The sludge from the hemp pits was also not left behind. It was dug out and spread on the fields. This stuff was even better for fertilizing the fields than the water from the hemp pits.

After this series of operations, the adverse effects of hemp soaking on the small river were minimized.

Cleaning up the hemp pits sounded the horn for the Sparrow Tribe to fertilize the land, kicking off the event.

After this, they transported the fertilizer soaked in the pits for nearly a year to the fields. The soil dug up from where fish were buried after frequent fishing was also dug up and transported to the fields.

Early winter was a good time to fertilize the fields.

First, people had more free time, and second, fertilizing the fields at this time was beneficial because it mixed the fertilizer with the soil, making it perfect for plowing and planting in the spring of the next year.

The agreement between Han Cheng and Wu was not forgotten. Ten acres of land were enclosed, and nothing was applied to them, not even the ashes of burned branches and fallen leaves.

Many people in the Sparrow Tribe were interested in this comparison.

Since they started farming, they had always heard the shaman say that fertilizing the land was good for it and could increase yields. However, they didn't know how much it could increase or how the effect compared to unfertilized land. They didn't have a clear concept of it.

The suggestion to enclose ten acres of land came from Han Cheng.

These ten acres included slopes, flat land, and land near the river, encompassing all types of land owned by the Sparrow Tribe.

This way, the results would be more convincing, and there would be no later doubts that the difference in yield was due to different terrains.

As the Green Sparrow Tribe was actively fertilizing the land, expecting a bumper harvest next year and witnessing the importance of fertilization, a crisis was also looming over the deer grazing far away from the tribe.