Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Chapter ii, p. 20, is devoted to the gittern and citole. In the first-named instrument we have the ancestor of the guitar, which it resembled in its flat back, and in the curving inwards of the vertical sides. {74a} It has generally been believed that the "waist" thus produced was an adaptation to the use of the bow, but, as the author points out, this form occurs long before the existence of bowed instruments. {74b} At p. 22 (Galpin) is given an early fourteenth century illustration of a gittern-player, holding in his right hand the plectrum with which he sounds the strings. The most curious point, however, is the depth of the neck of the instrument, which is pierced by a large hole to admit the left thumb; without this curious device it would apparently be impossible to stop the strings. On the same plate is given an illustration of the precious gittern at Warwick Castle, believed to date from about 1330, in which the thumb-hole is more clearly shown. The guitar, which may be considered a descendant of the gittern, is said to have completely eclipsed its ancestor in the seventeenth century. And at the present time it, together with the mandoline and the banjo, are the only representatives of the type in every-day use.

Mr Galpin places the citole in the same class as the gittern. He says that this instrument has been much misunderstood, and since I do not desire to add my quota to the injustice under which this unfortunate instrument suffers, I shall pass on to the mandore and lute. The essential characteristic of these instruments is that their bodies, instead of having the flat back of the guitar, are rounded. Though the body is now built of strips of wood or ivory, its form is "reminiscent of the time when the body or resonator consisted of a simple gourd or half-gourd covered with skin." In this they resemble the instruments of Oriental races, and the author traces the form of the rebec and mandoline as well as that of the mandore and lute to Persian, Arabic, and Moorish influence in the Middle Ages.

The European lute had at first only four strings, but in the "elaborate instruments of the seventeenth century there were twenty-six or thirty strings to be carefully tuned and regulated." No wonder that a lutenist should have been said to spend three-quarters of his existence in tuning his instrument. The mandore was a small form of lute, and is chiefly of interest because in a yet smaller form it still survives as the mandoline, which, however, usually has both wire and covered strings, and is played with a plectrum. To return to the lute, its most obvious characteristic is that the head (in which are the pegs for tuning the strings) is bent at right-angles to the general plane of the instrument. It is not clear what is the meaning of this curious crook in the instrument, but it is some comfort to the ignorant since it enables us to recognise a lute when we see one. Henry VIII. and his daughters Mary and Elizabeth are said to have been good lutenists. The smaller gut strings, called by the pleasant name of _minnikins_, were easily broken, and a gift of lute-strings was considered a present fit for a queen, and one which the great Elizabeth did not disdain.

There was also an archlute, which in its largest form--six feet in height--was known as the chitarrone. It had not the rectangular bend in the neck of the ordinary lute; it was also characterised by having four or five free or unstopped strings. A fine reproduction of Lady Mary Sidney and her archlute faces the title-page of the book.

Mr Galpin (p. 46) quotes from Thomas Mace's _Musick's Monument_, 1676, the proper method of "fretting" a lute or similar instrument. The frets, or horizontal strings or wires which make cross ridges on the neck of lutes, viols, etc., I had ignorantly imagined to be guides to the beginner as to where to stop the string; but it appears (Galpin, p. 46) that they "add to its tone and resonance by keeping the string from touching the finger-board too closely." The word "fret" is said to be derived from the old French _ferrette_, _i.e._, banded with iron. {77a}

[Picture: PLATE II. Various stringed instruments]

In Mace's {77b} book above referred to he discourses with a child-like enthusiasm on his favourite instrument. He does not follow the elder lutenists, whom he describes as "extreme shie in revealing the _Occult_ and _Hidden Secrets_ of the Lute." He gives the following examples of "_False and Ignorant Out-cries against the Lute_":--

(1) "That it is the _Hardest Instrument_ in the _World_.

(2) "That it will take up the Time of an _Apprenticeship_ to play
_well_ upon _It_.

(3) "That it makes _Young People_ grow _awry_.

(4) "That it is a very _Chargeable Instrument_ to keep; so that one had
as good keep a _Horse_ as a _Lute_ for _Cost_.

(5) "That it is a _Woman's Instrument_.

(6) "And lastly (which is the most _Childish_ of all the rest), It is
out of _Fashion_."

The following extracts from Mace will give some idea of his style and of his method of treating the subject:--

"_First_, _know that an Old Lute is better than a New one_: _Then_, _The Venice Lutes_ are commonly _Good_. There are diversities of _Mens Names_ in _Lutes_; but the _Chief Name_ we most esteem, is _Laux Maler_, ever written with _Text Letters_: _Two_ of which _Lutes_ I have seen (_Pittifull Old_, _Batter'd_, _Crack'd Things_) valued at 100 l. _a piece_ (p. 48).

"When you perceive any _Peg_ to be troubled with the _slippery Disease_, assure yourself he will never grow better of _Himself_, without some of _Your Care_; therefore take _Him_ out, and _examine_ the _Cause_ (p. 51).

"And that you may know how to _shelter your Lute_, in the worst of _Ill weathers_ (which is _moist_) you shall do well . . . to put _It into a Bed_, _that is constantly used_, _between the Rug and the Blanket_; but _never_ between the _sheets_, because they may be _moist_ with _Sweat_ (p. 62).

"Strings are of three sorts, _Minikins_, _Venice-Catlins_, _and Lyons_ (for _Basses_).

"I us'd to compare . . . _Tossing-Finger'd Players_ to _Blind-Horses_, which always _lift up their Feet_, _higher than need is_; and so by that means, _can never Run Fast_, or with a _Smooth Swiftness_" (p. 85).

He says, "You must be _Very Careful_ (now, in your first beginning) to get a _Good Habit_; so that you _stop close to your Fretts_, _and never upon any Frett_; _and ever_, _with the very End of your Finger_; except when a _Cross_, _or Full Stop_ is to be performed" (p. 99).

[Picture: Plate III. The Crwth]

Bowed Instruments.

Mr Galpin (p. 75) gives a figure of a man playing a Crowd with a bow, instead of plucking the strings with the fingers as shown in sculptured Irish Crosses. What makes the figure so especially interesting, is that there is clearly no means of _stopping_ the strings, _i.e._, of altering the length of the vibrating region, and therefore altering the pitch. No one, I fancy, would have guessed that the bow was of more ancient lineage than the fiddle. The finger-board, which transforms the instrument into an undeniable relative of the violin, is known to have existed in the thirteenth century. It is a striking fact that what is practically a cruit or rotte survived in use until the nineteenth century in this country, in the form of the Welsh _crwth_ or crowd shown on Plate III. There is a specimen dated 1742 in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The crwth here figured was made last century by Owain Tyddwr of Dolgelly, an old man who remembered the instrument as it was in his younger days, and took great pleasure in its reconstruction.

The crwth is followed by the rebec, which most of us know better from Milton's lines--

"When the merry bells ring round
And the jocund rebecks sound"--

than in any more practical manner. It had a certain resemblance to the lute in its pear-shaped outline and its convex or rounded sound-box, but differs from that instrument in being played with a bow. Mr Galpin quotes very appropriately the name of one of the country actors in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_--Hugh Rebeck--as suggesting that an everyday audience was familiar with it.

_Viols_.--The only surviving instrument of this class is the double bass, which is "still frequently made with the flat back and sloping shoulders of its departed predecessors." The bass viol was also known as the Viola da Gamba, and this was Sir Andrew Aguecheek's instrument, who was said to play on the "Viol de Gamboys." These instruments--bass and treble--had six strings, and were provided with frets like the guitar. Their tone is described as "soft and slightly reedy or nasal, but very penetrating." It seems that the smaller viols disappeared in England towards the end of the seventeenth century, but the type of viol corresponding to the violoncello "held its own for nearly another hundred years," when it at last yielded to the more modern instrument.

Under the heading "Concerning the _Viol_ and _Musick_ in general," Mace writes (p. 231):--

"It may be thought, I am so great a _Lover of It_ [the Lute], that I make _Light Esteem_ of any other _Instrument_, besides; which _Truly_ I do not; but _Love the Viol_ in a _very High Degree_; yea, close unto the Lute. . . .

"I cannot understand, how _Arts and Sciences_ should be subject unto any such _Phantastical_, _Giddy_, or _Inconsiderate Toyish Conceits_, as ever to be said to be _in Fashion_, _or out of Fashion_.

[Picture: PLATE IV. The Tromba Marina]

"I remember there was a _Fashion_, not many Years since, for _Women in their Apparel_ to be so _Pent up by the Straitness_, _and Stiffness_ of their _Gown-Shoulder-Sleeves_, that _They_ could not so much as _Scratch their Heads_ for the _Necessary Remove of a Biting Louse_; nor _Elevate their Arms scarcely to feed themselves Handsomely_; nor _Carve a Dish of Meat at a Table_, but their _whole_ Body must needs _Bend towards the Dish_."

And here we must leave Thomas Mace (who with all his oddities is a lovable and genuine writer) and pass on to the "scoulding" violin--to use his own phrase--an instrument he considered as only suitable for "any extraordinary Jolly or Jocund Consort-Occasion."

The violin, which finally ousted the treble viol, seems indeed to have had a humble beginning in fairs and country revels: but six violins were included in Henry VIII.'s band, where they were played by Italian musicians. Violins did not rapidly make their way to popularity, and Playford (1660) describes these instruments--rather condescendingly--as "a cheerful and spritely instrument much practised of late." He speaks, too, of a bass violin, _i.e._ the violoncello.

The chapter ends with a description of the tromba marina, which is not marine trumpet, but a curious elongated box-like instrument with a single string, which is sounded with a bow and wakens the harmony of the sympathetic strings within the body of the instrument. Mr Galpin's instrument was discovered in an old farmhouse in Cheshire (Plate IV.).

Chapter vi. is chiefly devoted to the organistrum or hurdy-gurdy (Plate V.). This is a stringed instrument which differs from the rest of its class by being sounded neither with fingers like the lute nor with a bow like the viol, but by means of a rotating wooden wheel. The melody string (or strings) is not stopped directly by the finger as in the violin, but by a series of keys manipulated by the performer, who need not necessarily possess a musical ear since the stopping is arranged for him. The Swedish nyckel-harpa--which I remember to have heard in Stockholm--is the only other instrument in which the strings are stopped by mechanical means. This instrument differs from the organistrum in the fact that it is sounded by the ordinary fiddle-bow, and not by means of a wheel. The organistrum is remarkable for having been "in constant and popular use" from the tenth century up to the present day.

Clavichord and Virginal.

The clavichord, the earliest progenitor of the piano, originated in an instrument in which the _tangent_ which struck a given string also acted as a bridge to mark off the length of the vibrating portion and therefore to determine the note produced. It is remarkable that (p. 115) this type of instrument remained in use until the time of Sebastian Bach, when the principle of "one tangent one string" replaced the more ancient system.

Of the clavichord Mr Dolmetsch (p. 433) writes that its tone is comparable, as regards colour and power, "rather to the humming of bees than to the most delicate among instruments. But it possesses a soul . . . for under the fingers of some gifted player it reflects every shade of" his "feelings like a faithful mirror. Its tone is alive, its notes can be swelled or made to quiver just like a voice swayed by emotion. It can even command those slight variations in pitch which in all sensitive instruments are so helpful to expression."

[Picture: PLATE V. I. Viola d'Amore. 2. Cither Viol. 3. Hurdy-gurdy or
Organistrum]

The best known among the group of instruments to which the clavichord belongs are the spinet and the harpsichord. I think that Browning's musician who "played toccatas stately at the clavichord" must have performed on one of the last-named instruments. In the spinet and the harpsichord the strings are plucked, and therefore sounded, by small points made of leather or of quill which are under the control of the keyboard.

Mr Galpin (who is always interesting on evolution) points out that the progenitor of the spinet is the plucked psaltery, whereas the piano forte (the earliest form of which appeared about 1709) is a descendant of the dulcimer in which the strings were struck.

Wind Instruments.

One of the most ancient of wind instruments is the panpipe, which used to be familiar in the Punch and Judy show of our childhood, when it was accompanied by another ancient instrument--the drum. The panpipe consists of a row of reeds of graduated lengths which are closed at the lower end and into which the performer blows, much as we used, as children, to blow into a key and produce a shrill whistle. It is illustrated in an Anglo-Saxon Psalter of the early eleventh century, which is preserved in the Cambridge University Library. The whistle which we have all made in our childhood by removing a tube of bark from a branch in which the sap is rising, is an advance on the panpipes, since it includes a method of producing a thin stream of air which impinges on a sharp edge, whereas in the panpipes we depend on our lips for the stream of air. These whistles are closed at the lower end, and yield but a single note. But in the tin penny whistle the tube is pierced by six holes for the fingers, and on this instrument one may hear the itinerant artist perform wonders. An instrument of this type, known as the recorder, played a great part in the early orchestra. It differs from the penny whistle in being made of wood, and in having eight instead of six finger-holes; the additional ones being for the left thumb and the little-finger of the right hand. The recorder seems to have been especially popular in England, indeed it was sometimes known as the _fistula anglica_, _i.e._ the English pipe. The instrument was made in different sizes; and I shall not easily forget the astonishing beauty of a quartette of recorders played by Mr Galpin and his family. In Plate VI. are shown the great bass recorders, in regard to which the author is careful to point out that the bassoon-like form shown in No. 1 and No. 5 does not alter the pitch of the instrument, which depends on the length of the tube measured from the fipple.

[Picture: Plate VI. Recorders]

Mr Dolmetsch, in his book _The Interpretation of the Music of the XVIlth and XVIIIth Centuries_, p. 457, writes:--

"At the first sound the recorder ingratiates itself into the hearer's affection. It is sweet, full, profound, yet clear, with just a touch of reediness, lest it should cloy."

"The intonation . . . right through the chromatic compass of two octaves and one note is perfect, if you know how to manage the instrument; but its fingering is complicated, and requires study."

The flageolet is the nearest living relative of the recorder. What is known as the French flageolet is especially reminiscent of the ancient instrument in having a thumb-hole, or rather two such holes. It has the pleasant archaic feature of its lowest note being produced by thrusting the little finger of the right hand into the open end of the tube. The most curious development of the flageolet is found in the double or triple pipes which were made in the closing years of the eighteenth century. I remember Mr Galpin demonstrating the truth of his assertion that duets and trios can be played on one of these curious instruments.

A much simpler instrument known as the tabor pipe {85} was in general use in the twelfth century. Its essential feature is that it has but three holes, so that it can be played with one hand, thus leaving the other hand free to accompany the melody on the tabor or small drum hung round the neck of the performer or from his wrist. Its working compass is an octave and three notes, though two shrieking higher notes can be produced. The French form of three-holed pipe is known as the galoubet. There was also a bass galoubet, which is known from the figures in Praetorius (1618), and from one solitary instrument which has escaped destruction. Mr Galpin has a copy of it in his great collection, and I have had the pleasure of playing on it. The instruments of the genus recorder have been finally beaten in the struggle for life by the flageolet, and perhaps especially by the true flute, which Mr Galpin, for the sake of clearness, distinguishes as the cross flute. It seems to be a mistake to consider the flute as a modern instrument, as it was popular about the year 1500, and is shown in an illuminated MS. of 1344 preserved at Oxford.

The flute as used about 1600 had but six holes, but the D# key for the little finger of the right hand came into use about the end of the seventeenth century, and about 1800 several keys had been added to enable the performer to play with less cross-fingering.

Dolmetsch, _op. cit._, p. 458, claims that although the one-keyed flute of the eighteenth century has a weak tone, it is more beautiful than the modern flute.

He adds that a flautist has recently studied this instrument, guided by Hotteterre le Romain's book (1707), and can play more perfectly in tune than "he ever did before upon a highly improved and most expensive modern instrument."

The concert-flute of the present day is an elaborate instrument covered with keys, and it has, I believe, been suggested that its tone is injured by this elaboration. Bass flutes have been made, one 3 ft. 7 ins. in length is mentioned, whose lowest note was an octave below middle C.

Shawms. {87}

The next class of wind instruments dealt with by the author is that of which the oboe and bassoon are typical. Mr Galpin refers to a reed-pipe with which I am very familiar; it is made from a dandelion stalk pinched flat at one end. Its principle is that of the oboe. I well remember admiring its tone as a child, and lamenting its very brief life, for it soon got spoiled. The reed of serious musical instruments is made of two pieces of cane which are flat at the free or upper end and terminate below in a tube which fits on to the instrument. This is an ancient type of instrument, for the Roman _tibia_ is believed to have been played with the "double reed," _i.e._ of oboe-type. I may here be allowed to quote from my _Rustic Sounds_, p. 5: "The most truly rustic instrument (and here I mean an instrument of polite life--an orchestral instrument) is undoubtedly the oboe. The bassoon runs it hard, but has a touch of comedy and a strong flavour of necromancy, while the oboe is quite good and simple in nature and is excessively in earnest; it seems to have in it the ghost of a sun-burnt boy playing to himself under a tree, in a ragged shirt unbuttoned at the throat." A figure is given (Galpin, p. 159) of a goat playing on a shawm {88} from a carving of the twelfth century at Canterbury. The name is believed to be derived from _calamaula_, a reed-pipe, which was corrupted to _chalem-elle_ and then to _shawm_. Shawms were made of various sizes, from the small treble instrument, one foot long, to the huge affair, six feet in length. The name Howe-boie, _i.e._ probably Haut-bois, was applied to the treble instrument as early as the reign of Elizabeth; while the deeper-toned instruments retained the name shawm. The bassoon is only a bass oboe rendered less cumbrous by the tube being bent sharply on itself. A tenor bassoon, known as the oboe da caccia, or teneroon, also existed, and if my memory serves me right, Mr Stone rescued one of these instruments from the band of a London boys' school. A teneroon of Mr Galpin's is shown at p. 168 of his book, where it appears to be about seven-tenths of the size of the ordinary bassoon.

[Picture: Plate VII. Pibcorn or Horn-pipe]

The next class of wind-instrument is that of which the clarinet is the modern representative. It has a rich but somewhat cloying tone, and, to my thinking, none of the mysterious charm of the oboe. It is characterised by a single vibrating plate or reed, and the current of air from the performer's mouth passes between it and an immovable surface of wood. In our country this type of reed was found in a most interesting instrument, the horn-pipe {89a} or pibcorn, which is said to have existed in Wales as late as the nineteenth century. One of these curious instruments is in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries, and is shown in Plate VII. It was given to the Society by Daines Barrington, who describes it in the Society's _Archaeologia_ for 1779. In a Saxon vocabulary of the eighth century the word _Sambucus_ (_i.e._ elder-tree) is translated _swegelhorn_. Now the word _swegel_ was applied to the _tibia_ or leg-bone; it is therefore of remarkable interest to find that, according to an old Welsh peasant, the tibia of a deer should be the best tube for the pibcorn. {89b} This name, which means pipe-horn, is very appropriate, since the tube of the instrument bears at either end a cow's horn. To the upper one the performer applied his mouth. He had no means of regulating the reed as a clarinet or oboe-player has; the reed was left to its own sweet will, as is also the case with the reeds in another ancient instrument--the bagpipe, to which a few words must be given.

Mr Henry Balfour believes that both these instruments came to us with the Keltic migration from the East. Or, as Mr Galpin suggests, we may owe the bagpipe to Roman soldiers, "for the _tibia utricularis_ was used in the Imperial army." It is quite a mistake to suppose that the bagpipe is in any special way connected with Scotland. Illuminated missals of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries show how common the bagpipe was in England. But the Scots must at least have a share of the credit of preserving the bagpipe from extinction; and the same may be said of another Keltic race, the Breton, in whose land I have heard the bagpipe accompanied by a rough kind of oboe.

Mr Galpin tells me a pleasant story of a bagpipe hunt in Paris. He discovered, in a shop, an old French musette (bagpipe), the chanter or melody-pipe of which was missing. He did not buy it until in a two days' hunt all over Paris he discovered the lost chanter, when he returned to the first shop, triumphantly carried off the musette, and thus became the owner of this rare and beautiful instrument.

The drone, which forms a continuous bass to the "chanter," was not an original character of the bagpipe, but appeared soon after the year 1300. A second drone "was added about the year 1400, for it is seen in the ancient bagpipe belonging to Messrs Glen of Edinburgh," which bears the date 1409.

The Horn and Cornett.

The horn takes its name from the cow's horn, out of which the instrument was made. The resemblance includes the tapering bore of this instrument, and also the fact that it is curved. {90} In the metal instruments, made in imitation of the natural horn, we find a curvature of about a semi-circle, as in the seventeenth century hunting horn (Galpin, p. 188). While in the horn of the early seventeenth century shown on the same plate, the tube is curved into many circular coils.

[Picture: PLATE VIII. I, 2, 3, 4, 5. Cornetts. 6. Serpent. 7. Bass Horn.
8. Ophicleide. 9. Keyed Bugle]

The cornett, {91} which was blown like a horn or trumpet, seems to have been successful in mediaeval times, because a workable scale was so much more easily attainable with it than in the ordinary trumpet. In Norway a goat's horn pierced with four or five holes stopped by the fingers is still in use as a rustic instrument. This is in fact a cornett which, as early as the twelfth century, was made of wood or ivory, and had a characteristic six-sided form. It seems to have been popular, and Henry VIII. died possessed of many cornetts. We hear, too, of two _Cornetters_ attached to Canterbury Cathedral; and the translators of the Bible gave it a place in Nebuchadnezzar's band. But the cornett was doomed to destruction in the struggle for life. In 1662 Evelyn speaks of the disappearance of the cornett "which gave life to the organ." Lord Keeper North wrote, "Nothing comes so near, or rather imitates so much, an excellent voice as a cornett pipe; but the labour of the lips is too great and is seldom well-sounded." The cornett was given a place in the chorales of Bach and the operas of Gluck after it had become extinct in England.

The bass cornett was known as the serpent from its curved form, and this character was in fact necessary in order that the performer's hands might be nearer together. Mr Galpin writes:--"If not overblown it yields a peculiarly soft _woody_ tone which no longer has its counterpart in the orchestra." He quotes from Thomas Hardy's _Under the Greenwood Tree_, where the village shoemaker remarks, "There's worse things than serpents." Dr Stone (_Dictionary of Music_, 1883) wrote:--"There were till a few years ago two serpents in the band of the Sacred Harmonic Society, played by Mr Standen and Mr Pimlett." The serpent {92} was driven out of the orchestra by the Ophicleide, which again has been extinguished by the valved Tubas of Adolphe Sax.

Trumpet and Sackbut.

"The story of the trumpet is the story of panoply and pomp," says Mr Galpin, and goes on to explain how the trumpeters with drummers formed an exclusive guild. Trumpets served as war-like instruments, but also for domestic pomp. Thus twelve trumpets and two kettle-drums sounded while Queen Elizabeth's dinner was being brought in. That monarch had certainly no excuse for being late for her meals.

The trumpet was originally a long straight cylindrical tube, but as early as 1300 the tube was bent into a loop, thus combining length with handiness. This form of the instrument was known as a clarion, a word which has degenerated in our day into a picturesque word for a trumpet. It was for the clarion that Bach and Handel wrote trumpet parts which, I gather, are almost unplayable on the modern instrument. The clarion seems to have been soon beaten in the struggle for life by the clarinet, "which, as its name implies, was considered an effective substitute for the high clarion notes."

The sackbut, _i.e._ trombone, is an important offshoot from the trumpet. The essential feature of this splendid instrument is that the length of the tube can be altered at will. Thus the performer is not--like the trumpeter--confined to one series of harmonics, but can take advantage of a whole series of these accessory notes.

The Organ.

This is one of the most ancient of instruments. Thus in the second century before our era Ctesibius of Alexandria had a simple type of organ, in which the wind from the bellows was admitted at will into whistle-like tube by keys which the performer depressed with his fingers. It is a remarkable fact that keys should afterwards have been replaced by cumbersome _sliders_ which had to be pushed in and out to produce the desired note. But so it was, and the keyboard had to be rediscovered in the twelfth century. The keys were first applied to the little portatives, {94a} one of which is figured by Galpin, p. 221, where the organist works the wind supply with one hand and manipulates the keys with the other. In Galpin, p. 222, a monk is shown playing a simple organ of apparently two octave compass, while another tonsured person is blowing a pair of bellows, one with the left and the other with the right hand. Another artist is shown by Galpin, p. 226, from a thirteenth century Psalter, who is accompanying a player of the symphony (hurdy-gurdy). The bellows are blown by the feet of an assistant.

The regal, figured by Galpin at p. 230, was a simple form of organ in which the pipes were not of the whistle-type, but consisted principally of reed-pipes.

Tabors and Nakers.

In my essay on war music {94b} I wrote of the band of a French regiment at the beginning of the war: "When the buglers were out of breath, the drums thundered on with magnificent fire, until once more the simple and spirited fanfare came in with its brave out-of-doors flavour--a romantic dash of the hunting-song, and yet with something of the seriousness of battle. . . . As I watched these men, so soon to fight for their country, I was reminded of that white-faced boy pictured by Stevenson, striding over his dead comrades, the roll of his drum leading the living to victory or death." I have ventured to quote the above passage in illustration of Mr Galpin's striking remark that the drum has probably entered more largely than any other instrument into the destinies of the human race.

The historian of musical instruments in the far north has an easy task, since it appears that the Eskimoes confine themselves to the drum, which they sound on all possible occasions, from prosperous huntings to the death of a comrade.

The instruments of the class here dealt with are divided into three types:--

(i.) The timbrel or tambourine, which is characterised by having only
one membrane stretched on a shallow wooden frame.

(ii.) The drum with two membranes, one at each end of a barrel-shaped
frame.

(iii.) The naker or kettle-drum, with a single membrane stretched over
the opening of a hemispherical frame. The tambourine is an extremely
ancient instrument since it was known in Assyria and Egypt as well as
in Greece and Rome, and it is especially interesting to learn that the
Roman tambourine had the metal discs which make so exciting a jingle in
the modern instrument. The mediaeval tambourine also had what, in the
case of the drum, is called the _snare_, which is a cord tightly
stretched across the membrane, and gives a certain sting to instruments
of this class, but now only exists in the drum proper.

Drum.

An ancient Egyptian drum was discovered at Thebes. It was a true drum having a membrane at each end of the hollow cylinder which made the frame, and, what is more remarkable, it had the braces or system of cords by which we still tighten the drum-membranes.

The drum "suspended at the side of the player and beaten on one head only" became, with the accompaniment of the fife, the earliest type of military music. {96a} Mr Galpin concludes {96b} by quoting what Virdung (1511) had to say of drums: "I verily believe that the devil must have had the devising and making of them, for there is no pleasure nor anything good about them. If the noise of the drum-stick be music, then the coopers who make barrels must be musicians."

Kettle-drums. {96c}

Anyone who has seen the band of the Life Guards must have admired (as I do) the splendid personage who plays the kettle-drums. These are not of the ordinary drum-form, being hemispherical instead of cylindrical, and having but a single membrane. They have a right to be called musical instruments since their pitch is alterable: {96d} I have often admired the drummer in an orchestra tuning his instrument at a change of key. One sees him leaning over his children like an anxious mother until he gets his large babies into the proper temper.

The earliest record of kettle-drums in this country is in the list of Edward I.'s musicians, among whom was Janino le Nakerer. Henry VIII. is said to have sent to Vienna for kettle-drums {97} that could be played on horseback in the Hungarian manner. In England, Handel was the first to use the kettle-drum in the concert-room, and he used to borrow from the Tower the drums taken from the French at the battle of Malplaquet in 1709.

Cymbals and Chimes.

The cymbals are of a great antiquity, being depicted on ancient Assyrian monuments, and "in the British Museum may be seen a pair of bronze cymbals which once did duty for the sacred rites of Egyptian deities." They are figured in English MSS. of the thirteenth century, and Mr Galpin gives a figure of a cymbal-player (as shown in a fourteenth century MS.) vigorously clashing his instrument. There was also an apparatus known as a jingling johnny, figured by Galpin at p. 258. It was a pole bearing a number of bells, hence the name which it doubtless deserved. The crescents with which it is decorated are an inheritance from its forbears of the Janizary bands.

Mr Galpin ends his book with a very interesting chapter on the _Consort_, _i.e._ Concert, which, however, does not lend itself to that abbreviation to which the rest of the book has been mercilessly subjected.

THE TRADITIONAL NAMES OF ENGLISH PLANTS

I do not pretend to be a specialist in the study of plant-names. But there is something to be said for ignorance (in moderation), since it brings reader and writer more closely together than is the case when the author knows the last word in a subject of which the reader knows nothing. But we need not consider the case of the blankly ignorant reader, and I can undertake that (for very sufficient reasons) I shall not be offensively learned.

The fact that language is handed on from one generation to the next may remind us of heredity, and the way in which words change is a case of variation. But we cannot understand what determines the extinction of old words or the birth of new ones. We cannot, in fact, understand how the principle of natural selection is applicable to language: yet there must be a survival of the fittest in words, as in living creatures. Language is a quality of man, and just as we can point to big racial groups such as that which includes the English, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and German peoples, so their languages, though differing greatly in detail, have certain well-marked resemblances. Of course I do not mean to imply that language is hereditary, like the form of skull or the colour of the hair. I only insist on these familiar facts in order to show that the wonderful romance inherent in the great subject of evolution also illumines that cycle of birth and death to which existing plant-names are due.

In the case of living creatures we can at least make a guess as to what are the qualities that have made them succeed in the struggle for life. But in the case of the birth and death of words we are surrounded with difficulties.

In some instances, however, it is clear that plant-names were forgotten with the growth of Protestantism. The common milk-wort used to be called the Gang-flower {100a} because it blossoms in what our ancestors called Gang Week,--"three days before the Ascension, when processions were made . . . to perambulate the parishes with the Holy Cross and Litanies, to mark their boundaries, and invoke the blessing of God on the crops." {100b} Bishop Kennet says that the girls made garlands of milk-wort and used them "in those solemn processions." As far as dates are concerned the name is fairly appropriate, for Rogation Sunday is 27th April, _i.e._ 10th May, old style, and, according to Blomefield, {100c} from eight years' observation, the milk-wort flowers on 15th May. The milk-wort is a small plant, and the labour of making garlands from it must have been considerable. There must have been a reason for using a blue flower, and I gather from a friend learned in such matters that blue is associated with the Virgin Mary, to whom the month of May is dedicated.

In this case we can perhaps understand why the name should have all but died out with the disappearance of these old ceremonies. But why should the name _milk-wort_ have survived? Its scientific name, Polygala, is derived from Greek and means "much milk," and the plant was supposed to encourage lactation. It is an instance of names being more long-lived than the beliefs which they chronicle.

There are, of course, many plants called after saints. Thus the pig-nut (_Bunium_) is called St Anthony's nut, because, as quoted by Prior, "The wretched Antonius" was "forced to mind the filthy herds of swine." The buttercup (_R. bulbosus_) was called St Anthony's turnip from its tubers being said to be eaten by pigs.

St Catherine's flower (_Nigella_) (generally known as love-in-a-mist or devil-in-a-bush) is called after the martyr from the arrangement of its styles, which recall the spokes of St Catherine's wheel. I do not mean the well-known fireworks but the instrument of torture on which the saint died. St James' wort is the yellow daisy-like flower _Senecio Jacobaea_, known as rag-wort. It is said to have been used as a cure for the diseases of horses, of which he was the patron.

In the old herbals the cowslip is called St Peter's wort from the resemblance of the flowers to a bunch of keys--no doubt the keys of heaven, of which Peter is custodian.

A number of plants were called after the Virgin Mary: these were doubtless known as Our Lady's flowers, but their names have been corrupted in Protestant days by the omission of the pronoun.

Lady's fingers (_Anthyllis vulneraria_) is a common enough plant bearing a head or tuft of yellow flowers. Each has a pale swollen calyx, and these are, I suppose, the fingers on which the name is founded, though I find it said that it originates in the leaflets surrounding the flower head.

Butcher's broom is known in Wales as Mary's holly, the latter half of the name referring to its red berries and prickly leaves. It was used to clean butcher's blocks.

Lady's slipper is so named from the strikingly shoe-like form of the flower. It is excessively rare in England, but in Southern France one may see great bunches gathered for sale, over which, by the way, I have often mourned.

Lady's tresses (the orchid _Spiranthes_) is so named from the curious twisted or braided arrangement of the flowers.

Lady's smock (_Cardamine pratensis_) bears a name immortalised in Shakespeare's song:--

"When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady's smocks all silver white,
And cuckow-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight."

I suspect that the poet called them _silver white_ to rhyme with _delight_, for they are distinctly lilac in colour. Nor are they especially smock-like--many other flowers suggest a woman's skirt equally well--but this is a carping criticism.

Lady's bedstraw seems to have been so called from the yellow colour of one or more kinds of Galium.

Lady's bower is _Clematis vitalba_, now known as traveller's joy. Anyone exploring Seven Leases Lane, which runs along the edge of the Cotswolds, will travel in continuous joy, for the lady's bower converts many hundred yards of hedge into continuous beauty.

_Pulmonaria_ has been called the Virgin Mary's tears, from the pale circular marks on its leaves. The blue flowers have been supposed to typify the beautiful eyes of the Virgin, while the red buds are the same eyes disfigured with weeping.

Many plants are named after the devil; there is, for instance, a species of _Scabiosa_ called devil's bit, because that eminent personage bit the root short off, and so it remains to this day. His object seems to have been to destroy the medicinal properties the plant was supposed to possess.

We now pass on to plants flowering on certain dates, such as Saints' days or other church festivals. The snowdrop has been called the Fair Maid of February, because it was supposed to flower on Candlemas Day, 2nd February, which would be 15th February according to the modern calendar.

The name St John's wort, which we habitually apply to several species of _Hypericum_, is correctly used only for _H. perforatum_. Its English name is said to have been given from its flowering on St John's Day, 24th June. This would be 7th July, new style, and I find that Blomefield's average of eight annual observations is 4th July.

I had been wondering why there seemed to be no name for St John's wort suggested by the glands, which show as pellucid dots when the leaf is held up to the light. And in Britten and Holland's _Dictionary of English Plant Names_, 1886, I found that _H. perforatum_ was called Balm of Warrior's Wound, which must refer to the innumerable stabs it exhibits, though they are more numerous than most warriors can endure. A closely related plant is _Hypericum androsaemum_, known as Tutsan, said to mean _toute saine_, as curing all hurts. In Wales, as I well remember forty years ago, the leaves were kept in bibles. They are, as I learn from a Welsh scholar, known as Blessed One's leaves.

The common yellow wayside plant _Geum urbanum_ is known as Herb Benet, because, like St Benet, it had the power of counteracting the effect of poison.

The sweet-william is said by Forster to be so named from flowering on St William's Day, 25th June. But Blomefield's date is 17th June, which would be 4th June, old style. A much more probable explanation is that William is a corruption of the French name _oeillet_, a word derived from the Latin _ocellus_, a little eye. So that the ancestry of the name runs thus:--_Ocellus_--oeillet--Willy--William.

Oxalis, the wood-sorrel, was known as hallelujah, not only in England but in several parts of the Continent, from its blossoming between Easter and Whitsuntide, when psalms were sung ending in the word hallelujah.

Historical.

Some plant-names take us back to historical personages. The Carline thistle is named after Karl the Great, better known as Charlemagne. There was a pestilence in his army, and in answer to his prayer an angel appeared and shot, from a crossbow, a bolt, which fell on the Carline thistle with which the Emperor proceeded to conquer the pestilence.

Another magical arrow-shot is described in well-known lines in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ (Act ii., scene I). Oberon speaks of Cupid loosing his "love shaft smartly from the bow" at "a fair vestal throned in the west." Cupid missed his mark, and the poet continues:--

"Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it Love-in-idleness."

The name Love-in-idleness should be Love-in-idle if the metre could have allowed it. This means love-in-vain: witness the Anglo-Saxon bible, where occurs the phrase to take God's name "in idle." The flower referred to by Shakespeare is doubtless the pansy.

Some names recall the work of more modern people. Thus the wild chamomile was known in the Eastern counties as _Mawther_; and this, as all lovers of Dickens will remember, means not a mother but a girl; and the name is in fact a translation of the Greek Parthenion into the Suffolk dialect.

The elder used to be known as the _bour-tree_. I fear that the name is extinct in England, but a Scotch friend tells me that he was familiar with it in his youth. I love this name because it is associated in my mind with the words of Meg Merrilees {106} in _Guy Mannering_, the first English classic in which I took pleasure.

"Aye, on this very spot the man fell from his horse--I was behind the bour-tree bush at the very moment. Sair, sair he strove, and sair he cried for mercy; but he was in the hands of them that never kenn'd the word!"

The actual origin of the name is, however, not romantic; it is said to mean _bore_, and to refer to the fact that tubes were made from it by boring out the pith. It seems possible that such tubes were, in primitive times, used to blow the fire, and this would explain the name elder, which seems to mean _kindler_.

The dwarf elder, a distinct species, though not connected with an individual, commemorates a race, being known as Dane's blood. It grows on the Bartlow Hills, near Cambridge, where tradition says that Danes were killed in battle.

I add a few names as being picturesque, though without any literary associations.

There is an old name for the shepherd's purse, viz., clapperde-pouch, which is said to allude to the leper who stood at the cross-ways announcing his presence with a bell and clapper, and begged for pennies to put in his pouch, which is typified by the seed capsule. Another name for the plant is mother's heart, {107} and is no doubt referable to the shape of the seed pod. Children in England, also in Germany and Switzerland, used to play at the simple game of asking a companion to gather a pod, and then jeering at him for having plucked out his mother's heart.

The name columbine comes from the flower's obvious resemblance to a group of doves, and its Latin name _aquilegia_, meaning a collection of eagles, is a nobler form of the same idea.

Dead-man's fingers is a fine uncanny name for the innocent _Orchis maculata_, and refers to its branching white tuber.

Garlick is a very ancient name, being derived from the Anglo-Saxon _gar_, a spear, and _leac_, a plant; in the name house-leek the word still bears its original meaning of a plant.

_Tragopogon_, the goat's beard, which closes its flowers about mid-day, was once known as go-to-bed-at-noon.

The pansy has been called Herb trinity from the triple colouring of its petals. In Welsh, and also in German, the pansy is called stepmother. The lower petal is the most decorative, and this is the stepmother herself. On examining the back of the flower it will be seen that she is supported by two green leaflets, known as the _sepals_. These are called her two chairs. Then come her two daughters, less smart, and having only a chair apiece. Lastly, the two step-daughters, still more plainly dressed and with but one chair between them.

Polemonium, from its numerous leaflets arranged in pairs, has received the picturesque name of Jacob's ladder. I remember the pleasure with which I first saw it growing wild in the hayfields of the Engadine.

Polygonatum, _i.e._ Solomon's seal, has been christened _Scala coeli_, the ladder to heaven, on the same principle. The name Solomon's seal is not obviously appropriate till we dig up the plant, when the underground stem is found marked with curious scars, which, however, should be pentagonal if they are to represent Solomon's pentacle.

Herb twopence (_Lysimchia nummularia_) is so named after the round leaflets arranged in pairs along its creeping stalk. I do not know why _Inula conyza_ is called ploughman's spikenard, but it is a picturesque name.

Everyone knows the garden plant touch-me-not, so called from the curious irritability of its pods, which writhe in an uncanny way when we gather them. This quality is expressed twice over in the Latin name _Impatiens noli-me-tangere_. But there is a forgotten old English name which pleases me more, viz., quick-in-the-hand, that is to say alive-in-the-hand. This use of the word survives in the familiar phrase "the quick and the dead."

The English name of _Echium vulgare_ is viper's bugloss--this I had always imagined referred to the forked tongue (the style) which projects from the flower. But it is said to be so named from the seeds resembling a viper's head. This is certainly the case, and what can be the function of the little knobs on the seed, which represent eyes, I cannot imagine. The name bugloss is derived from the Greek and means ox-tongue--no doubt in reference to the plant's rough leaves.

_Corruptions_.--Another and greater class of names comprises those which are corruptions of classical names or of those unfamiliar in other ways.

A well-known example is daffodil, which was originally affodyl, a corruption of asphodel, a name of unknown meaning, originally given to the iris, and transferred to narcissus. A very obvious corruption is aaron, which has been applied to Lords and Ladies, whose scientific name is Arum. An incomprehensibly foolish instance is bullrush for pool-rush, _i.e._ water rush. This name has at least the merit of supplying material for that riddle of our childhood in which occur the words "when the bull rushes out."

Carraway is another obvious corruption of its Latin name _Carum carui_. In the ancient _Schola Salernitana_, as I learn from Sir Norman Moore, is a punning Latin line, "Dum carui carwey non sine febre fui" ("When I was out of carraway I was never free from fever").

Dogwood (_Cornus sanguinea_) was originally dagwood, so called because it was used to make _dags_ or skewers: doubtless the same word as dagger. According to a Welsh tradition dogwood was the tree on which the devil hung his mother. I cannot resist the pleasure of quoting this fact, although it does not bear on anything in particular.

Eglantine, a name used for the wild rose, is with much probability derived from the Latin _aculentus_, prickly, which became in French _aiglent_. Hence came the French names of the plant _eglantier_ and our _eglantine_.

Gooseberry is believed not to have anything to do with a goose, but to come from the Flemish _Kroes_, meaning a cross, a comparison said to be suggested by the triple thorns, though of course a fourth thorn is needed to make this simile accurate. It is hard to see why a plant which grows wild in England, and seems by some botanists to be considered indigenous, should have a Flemish name. Prior, our chief authority, asserts that the early herbalists constantly took names from continental writers, and I think his judgment may be trusted. The problem of the derivation of the word gooseberry may at least serve to illustrate the difficulty of the subject.

The name _Hemlock_, which nowadays has a wicked poisonous sound, has in truth a very innocent origin. It is compounded of _hem_, _i.e._ haulm, a stalk, and _lock_, or leac, a plant, thus signifying merely a plant with a stem. Jack of the Buttery, a name applied to _Sedum acre_, is said to be a corruption from _bot_, _i.e._ an internal parasite, and _theriac_, by which was meant a cure for that evil. The last-named word has turned into "Jack," and _bot_ has grown into "buttery."

Lamb's tongue is said to be a name for _Plantago media_; but this must, I think, be a corruption of land tongue, which is highly appropriate to the tongue-like leaves lying so closely appressed to the soil that no blade of grass grows under them, as though they were determined to spite any one who should root them up by disfiguring his lawn with naked patches. But still better evidence is forthcoming in the fact that my old Cambridgeshire gardener always called them land tongues. Why the Anglo-Saxons used the name _way bread_ for the plantain I do not see: the fact is vouched for by Cockayne in his book entitled _Leechdoms_.

In Gloucestershire the plantain is called the _fire-leaf_, a name which records the belief that plantains are a danger in the way of heating hay-stacks.