It was described by Frederick Law Olmstead in 1853 as a 'long, loud, musical shout, rising and falling and breaking into falsetto', a description that would also have fitted examples recorded a century later.
Verbal, improvised lines were used as cries for water and food and cries about what was happening in their daily lives, as expressions of religious devotion, a source of motivation in repetitive work, and a way of presenting oneself over across the fields.