Even the master whistler from Gomez Eugenio Darias (2021), despite stating in a newspaper article that the Herreño whistle was “conventional” and not articulated, demonstrated to have understood it through various recordings, to the point that he was able to detect that the sentence “Eloy is on the mountain” had been inaccurately whistled by a blacksmith like Eloy walks down. Thus, with this simple fact, Darias proved the certainty of what he intended to deny, reaffirming the doubly articulated character of the Herreño whistle.
On the other hand, it is also true that, until recently, the academic world and Canarian society in general had much less news of the Herreño whistle than of the Gomero. But it turns out that there was no reliable knowledge of the latter until 1867, when the Travel Pictures of the Canary Islands by the Weimar geologist Karl von Fritsch appeared, written in German. And only as of 2006, when these paintings were translated into Spanish, were they considered the first allusion to the articulated whistle in La Gomera.
Indeed, before Fritsch, other countrymen of his (such as the physician and naturalist Carl Bolle) who had visited and resided on the Columbian island wrote about it without making, as far as we know, any reference to the whistle. It also turns out that 330 years before Bolle, the Extremaduran priest Vasco Díaz Tanco, who lived thirteen months in La Gomera from 1520, did not refer to this cultural manifestation either, despite the fact that, in his extensive poem entitled Triunfo gomero diverso , thoroughly described the landscape, toponymy and customs of this island. From all the above it can be deduced that, currently, the first undoubted document on the existence of the articulated whistle of La Gomera dates from the sixties of the nineteenth century.
And, in this sense, the first reliable document on the articulated whistle of El Hierro, as we have seen, was written only 24 years later. In it, the French anthropologist Joseph Lajard provides drawings on the different ways of inserting the fingers in the mouth to whistle, among which there is one that does not seem to have been documented in La Gomera to date and that, however, persists on the island of the Meridian. This testimony of Lajard is, we insist, an absolutely reliable document, despite the fact that the articulated whistles were emitted by bakers from Herrera residing in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, a common circumstance at that time, when the farmers of the seventh island were forced to to emigrate to the capital islands to improve their difficult living conditions. In fact, its presence in the capital of Palma has been amply documented since then.
Both whistles are cultural expressions with a heritage value beyond the debate around their origin.
It is also true that subsequent scientific studies forgot the island of El Hierro, which was traveled (and traveled) even less than La Gomera because of the fact that it was the most remote and unapproachable, as well as the least and most the most sparsely and sparsely populated of the Canaries. Hence, the rubber whistle has been the protagonist of the studies on the whistled language in the Canary Islands, which, together with the interest it aroused among the Tenerife bourgeoisie at the end of the s. XIX, contributed decisively to its dynamization and current prestige. However, such contingent circumstances do not harm the fact that, today, the existence and survival of the Herreño whistle is known and recognized, so it is natural that the inhabitants of this island want to be talked about and defend its relevance from the name Silbo Herreño, with which even the buses of the insular transport company have already been labeled.
How could it be otherwise, the Silbo Herreño thanks the Gomero, his older brother, for the promotion, revitalization and international recognition that he has achieved for this cultural manifestation, but for this he cannot and should not renounce the recognition of his existence. And we all know that what does not have a name does not exist, so that the name of Silbo Herreño is inalienable for the inhabitants of this island. In fact, with all property, a scholar of the stature of Jens Lüdtke entitled The Whistled Language of La Gomera and El Hierro one of the epigraphs of his work The origins of the Spanish language in America. The first changes in the Canary Islands, the Antilles and Castilla del Oro (2014), probably because, being oblivious to petty island disputes, he felt free to get closer to the truth. The name Silbo Gomero arose when, in a generalized way, only the existence of the Silbo Gomero was known. But now that the existence of the Herreño whistle is also generally known, the name Herreño whistle is inalienable.
Of course, the Herreños would never oppose a denomination like Silbo Gomero y Herreño or, as Lüdtke called it, with a broader periphrasis, the whistled language of La Gomera and El Hierro. Nor would they feel the least disdain for the fact that the Herreño gentilicio appears in second place, since the importance and versatility of the rubber whistle has turned out to be greater. What the Herreños are opposed to is that the existence of their whistle is denied by calling it a rubbery whistle, because, despite the fact that the opposite has been defended from interested positions, rubbery whistle is not understood as a ready-made phrase or complex lexicon of the type Russian salad, but rather as an “articulated whistle that is practiced (exclusively) on La Gomera”, to the exclusion of the other islands, which, as we know, is not true.
Because the whistle has been and continues to be practiced in El Hierro and, furthermore, there are many oral testimonies and even very recent recordings that show that it is still being used, at least in parts of Tenerife and Gran Canaria. This being the case, it would be necessary to speak of the canary whistle to refer to this phenomenon in a general way. Therefore, before reaching hasty conclusions, such as that of those who selflessly defend that the name of the Gomero whistle should be extended to any form of articulated whistle in our Islands, we think that it is essential that the history of the Gomero and Herreño whistle be studied. with the care, depth and impartiality that a serious investigation into this phenomenon requires.
And, if it were discovered that the Herreño whistle (and the Tenerife and Gran Canaria whistles) were brought to this island (s) by gomero whistles, then there would be no problem in talking about the “gomero whistle in El Hierro”. But … what if the opposite was discovered? Would the gomeros admit that, from then on, there was talk of “Herreño whistle in La Gomera”? What if it were shown that both whistles come from the Berber populations of the Moroccan Atlas that still continue to practice it? Should we speak then of “Moroccan whistle in La Gomera and El Hierro”?
In our opinion, all these names are absurd, because as the prolific writer from Madrid José Bergamín said and the sadly late Tenerife anthropologist Fernando Estévez quoted profusely, “looking for the roots is a way of going around the bush”, since limiting a cultural manifestation as important and particular as the whistle at its origins supposes, from the anthropological point of view, a metaphysical, essentialist, diffusionist and static approach. This perspective would ignore such important issues as the natural and human conditions that favored the adoption of the whistle, what has been its process of adaptation to the new insular environment, what social functions it has performed and under what varieties (diatopic, diachronic, diastratic and diaphasic) it is has manifested. In sum, both the Silbo Gomero and the Silbo Herreño are cultural expressions that have a heritage value that goes far beyond the debate around their hypothetical origin and their disputed linguistic system.
For all that has been said and for the moment, we believe that it is convenient to speak of “silbo gomero” and “silbo herreño”, perhaps granting precedence to the former for having enjoyed greater versatility, popularity, international recognition and study than the herreño, at least until the date. But science advances and knowledge changes. While the existence of the whistle in El Hierro was not sufficiently known, it was legal to speak only and simply of the rubber whistle. But today, since it is reliably known that there has been and is a whistle in El Hierro, to speak of a rubber whistle in El Hierro is an antiscientific falsehood that cannot be tolerated even from an exclusively historical point of view.
And if, as it seems, there was not only a whistle on La Gomera and El Hierro, but also on Tenerife and Gran Canaria, which is the majority of our Islands, then it is clear that we should speak of a Canarian whistle. Meanwhile, the most scientific and true thing is to speak, in the linguistic conflict that concerns us, of the Gomero and Herreño whistle or the Gomero whistle and the Herreño whistle, formulas that unite these two islands that have had so much in common throughout history.
