He selected a calabash rattle, and, sometimes rattling, sometimes drumming an accompaniment, taught the songs of the Lodge to Little-wolf. There were songs of opening and songs of closing, as well as the animal songs, each repeated four times, the sacred number, and each in groups of four. Each was made obscure and unintelligible to eavesdroppers by the addition of nonsense syllables. Some, indeed, were so ancient, and so clouded by vocables, that nothing but their general meaning was remembered even by the brethren. These passed for songs in a secret, magic language. Some chants were in other languages, particularly Ojibway, and all ended with the mystic phrase “we-ho-ho-ho-ho,” which meant “so mote it be.” The songs had titles, but these names too, were magic, and often gave no inkling of the meaning or wording of the song, and most of them avoided naming the animals or gods to which they referred, except by circumlocution, or by merely mentioning some prominent characteristic or attribute of the creature.