The Circassians also beguile the way on their journeys with riding songs. These are sung in alternate strains, one being generally a clamorous recitative, and the other a kind of choral fugue, strange and romantic, and heard with pleasing effect in the mountains. Often when toiling at a foot-pace up the precipitous path of the torrent, or descending equally slow into the pass gloomy with impending rocks and drooping boughs, the travellers will burst involuntarily into a wild and plaintive lament over some fallen chieftain, one portion of the party singing in subdued tones a hurried chant like the English litany, and the other answering at the end of the stanzas with their full, mellow Ay! ay! a-rira! which, like the pealing organ through the aisles, swells and floats away between the rocky sides of the glen. Similar are the boat-songs on the Euxine and the Caspian. Of these there is a great variety, and all are chanted to the measured movement of the oars, now stronger, now weaker, and each stanza followed by a chorus. Their A-ri-ra-cha always produces great effect on the rowers, and is mingled more or less with shouts, screams, and a mad-like laughter, while the long flat-bottomed canoe flies through the water driven by bending oars. All festal occasions in Circassian life are enlivened by the presence of the minstrel. He is present when the warriors of the tribe assemble to sit in the council ring beneath the oaks; and in the intervals between the harangues of the orators who, sword in hand, urge the storming of a Russian fort or a raid upon the steppes, he fans the flame in their breasts by striking his lyre in praise of some hero illustrious in arms. When also a chieftain, desirous of raising a band of volunteers for some expedition against the enemy, rides from aoul to aoul summoning all good swords to follow, he transports along with him on the crupper of an attendant the aged minstrel, who at the gates sings the call to arms. His sightless eyeballs in frenzy roll, and the braves, both old and young, carried away now by his pathos and now by his rage, shout in chorus their ka-ri-ra, and spring into their saddles. And when at last the warrior's race finished, his companions bring him, lashed on his steed, back at night to the aoul from which he rode so gayly forth in the morning, and with arms locked around each other's necks stand encircling the bard, the latter commences a monotonous but beautifully plaintive wail, his voice subdued with sorrow, and running at the end of the lines upon the same note, which rapidly caught and prolonged is like an uncontrollable gust of anguish, until the brothers in arms, no less impassioned, break in with a chorus so sad, slow, and low that every eye would fill with tears were it ever permitted the Circassian to weep for the brave.