“My theory I got from talking to an old shepherd,” says John Lucas, author of A Brief History of Whistling. “He was this very knowledgeable guy, trained sheepdogs, and he ran through a whole bunch of calls with me and did one that sounded exactly like a wolf whistle. I said, ‘Christ, that’s a bit politically incorrect!’ and he said, ‘No, it’s kosher, it’s from Albania’.”The shepherd explained that in mountainous parts of Southern Europe, shepherds have for centuries used the whistle to warn each other, and their dogs, when wolves appeared. They’d put two or three fingers in their mouths, then blow those notes. “It’s an incredible carrying whistle, unbelievably noisy,” Lucas says, “You’d hear it for miles.” Both the technique and the tune seem to have been called wolf whistling.

But by the 1930s, that two-note whistle had started being associated with an altogether different type of wolf – the sexual predator. Lucas saw that use for himself as a boy during World War Two. He lived in rural Leicestershire and there were a lot of America GIs – soldiers – stationed near his home. Lucas and his friends would follow them around hoping to get some chewing gum. “They’d hang around outside the church hall, outside dances, and they’d whistle at women as they went in. That’s when I first heard it. Quite how it transformed from Albanian sheep farmers to GIs I couldn’t guess.”

Felly, oes yna unrhyw wrthwynebiad i ddeud 'chwibanu blaidd'? Mae'n amlwg be mae'n feddwl.

Diolch ymlaen llaw.

Anna