In Spain

Even today, it is not difficult to think of a wineskin. A soft vessel of hide, dipped in tar, and lined with a bladder, its narrowing throat often ends with a mouth of horn. Wine is poured out of the skin from a set distance and shows either a host's skill or the stranger's chagrin. One such skin rested in a Spanish cellar for as many years as it took for its contents to evaporate away. And when at last it was rediscovered, and the stopper removed, so as to find what remained inside, the one who discovered it was amazed to hear a strange call, which seemed to belong to older days, emerging from the skin's throat. Upon listening to the wineskin's utterances, its new owner quickly resealed it and considered how this might be turned to advantage. From every discovery others follow and so the skin's owner began to adjust the collar fastened around its neck. The purpose of these collars is to regulate how quickly wine may be poured - and as it is with the wine from other skins, so it must have been with this wineskin's voice. According to one or another rule of flowing, the mysterious cry must issue forth, and be lost, more quickly the more widely the collar was opened. So it follows, if there were a limit to the voice, as there is a limit to the contents of all other skins, then holding some of the voice back, to preserve it, and to stop it draining away all at once like a libation poured upon sun-baked earth, soon became the major concern of possessing it. But if the collar could be tightened until the neck was almost completely closed off, the wineskin's calling out would then continue until the end was reached, by one path or another.