"MUSIC," said quaint old Thomas Fuller, "is nothing else but wild sounds civilized into time and tune," and Wallaschek, in his recent volume on Primitive Music, has shown how every nation under heaven, even the most savage and barbarous of peoples, have had a share in the work of civilization. Music has been called "the language of the gods," "the universal speech of mankind," and, early in the golden age of childhood, the heaven of infancy, is man made captive by "music's golden tongue." As Wallaschek has said of the race, Tracy says of the individual, "no healthy, normal child is entirely lacking in musical 'ear.'” The children of primitive races enjoy music, as well as their fellows in civilized communities. The lullaby, that quod semper ubique et ab omnibus of vocal art, early engages and entrances the infantile ear, and from the musical demonstrations of his elders, the child is not always or everywhere excluded. Indeed, the infant is often ushered into the world amid the din and clamour of music and song which serve to drown the mother's cries of pain, or to express the joy of the family or the community at the successful arrival of the little stranger.

Education in music and the dance begins very early with many peoples. At the school of midwifery at Abu-Zabel in Egypt, according to Clot-Bey, in cases of difficult childbirth, a child is made to hop and dance about between the legs of the mother in order to induce the foetus to imitate it (125. II. 159).

As understudies and assistants to shamans, "medicine-men," and "doctors," children among many primitive peoples soon become acquainted with dance and song.

In Ashanti, boy musicians, singers, and dancers figure in the processions of welcome of the chiefs and kings, and young girls are engaged in the service of the fetiches (438. 258). At a funeral dance of the Latuka, an African tribe, "the women remained outside the row of dancers dancing a slow, stupid step, and screaming a wild and most inharmonious chant, whilst boys and girls in another row beat time with their feet." Burchell, while en route for the Kaffir country, found among certain tribes that "in the evening a whole army of boys would come to his hut and listen with manifest pleasure to the tones of his violin, and would repeat the melodies he played with surprising accuracy" (546. 3, 199).

The meke-meke, a dance of the Fiji Islanders, "is performed by boys and girls for whom an old musician plays "; at Tahiti the children are early taught the 'ubus,' songs referring to the legends or achievements of the gods," and "Europeans have at times found pleasure in the pretty, plaintive songs of the children as they sit in groups on the sea-shore" (546. 35, 180, 208). In some of the Polynesian Islands, young girls are "brought up to dance the timorodea, a most lascivious dance, and to accompany it with obscene songs" (100. 62). At Tongatabu, according to Labillardière, a young girl "sang a song, the simple theme of which she repeated for half-an-hour" (546. 31). Wallaschek calls attention to the importance of the child in song in the following words (546. 75):

"In some places the children, separated from the adults, sing choruses among themselves, and under certain circumstances they are the chief support of the practice of singing. On Hawaii, Ellis found boys and girls singing in chorus, with an accompaniment of seven drums, a song in honour of a quondam celebrated chief. Even during supper with the Governor, table-music was performed by a juvenile bard of some twelve or fourteen summers, who sang a monotonous song to the accompaniment of a small drum. . . . In Fiji a man of position deems it beneath him to sing, and he leaves it to his wife and children, so that women sing with women only, and children with children."

Speaking of the natives of Australia, with whom he came into

contact, Beckler says "the octaves of the women and children at the performance he attended were perfectly in tune, as one rarely hears in a modern opera chorus, they were in exact accord.” In the Kuri dance, witnessed by Angas, a number of boys take part (546. 37, 223).

In New Guinea "the Tongala-up, a stick with a string whirled in the air, is played by women and children." Among the Tagals of the Philippines, Volliner found (with perhaps a little Spanish influence) "a chorus was performed in a truly charming manner by twelve young girls formed in a circle, one girl standing in the middle to direct." In the Andaman Islands, where the men only, as a rule, sing, "the boys were far the best performers" (546. 24, 27, 75).

Among the Apache Indians of Arizona and Mexico, "old matrons and small children dance until no longer able to stand, and stop for very exhaustion" (546. 46).

The Child as Poet.

Victor Hugo, in one of his rhapsodies, exclaims: "The most sublime psalm that can be heard on this earth is the lisping of a human soul from the lips of childhood," and the rhythm within whose circle of influence the infant early finds himself, often leads him precociously into the realm of song. Emerson has said, "Every word was once a poem," and Andrew Lang, in his facetious Ballade of Primitive Man, credits our Aryan ancestors with speaking not in prose, but "in a strain that would scan." In the statement of the philosopher there is a good nugget of truth, and just a few grains of it in the words of the wit.

The analogy between the place and effect of rhythm, music, and poetry in the life of the child and in the life of the savage has been frequently noted. In his recent study of Rhythm (405 a), Dr. Bolton has touched up some aspects of the subject. With children "the habit of rhyming is almost instinctive" and universal. Almost every one can remember some little sing-song or nonsenseverse of his own invention, some rhyming pun, or rhythmic adaptation. The enormous range of variation in the wording of counting-out rhymes, game-songs, and play-verses, is evidence enough of the fertility of invention of child-poets and childpoetesses. Of the familiar counting-out formula Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, the variants are simply legion.

The well-known lines of Pope :·

"As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,

I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came,"

receive abundant illustration from the lives of the great geniuses of song.

Among primitive peoples, if anywhere, poeta nascitur, non fit. In her article on Indian Songs, Miss Alice C. Fletcher says: "Children make songs for themselves, which are occasionally handed down to other generations. These juvenile efforts sometimes haunt the memory in maturer years. An exemplary old man once sang to me a composition of his childhood, wherein he had exalted the pleasures of disobedience; but he took particular care that his children should not hear this performance. Young men sing in guessing-games, as they gambol with their companions, tossing from hand to hand a minute ball of buffalo hair or a small pebble, moving their arms to the rhythm of the music." This, and the following statement made of the Omaha Indians, will hold for not a few other savage and barbarous tribes: "Children compose ditties for their games, and young men add music to give zest to their sports (445).

Dr. F. Boas says of the Eskimo of Baffin Land (402. 572): "Children tell one another fables and sing short songs, especially comic and satirical ones." The heroes of the Basque legend of Aquelarre are thus described by Miss Monteiro (505. 22): —

“Izar and Lañoa were two orphan children; the first was seven years of age, and the latter nine. These poor children, true wandering bards, frequented the mountains, earning a livelihood by singing ballads and national airs in sweet, infantile voices, in return for a bed of straw and a cupful of meal. Throughout the district these children were known and loved on account of their sad state, as well as for their graceful forms and winning ways."

Mr. Chatelain, in his recent work on African folk-tales, says of the natives of Angola: "No Angola child finds difficulty at any time in producing extemporaneous song."

Dr. Gatschet, in his study of the Klamath Indians, gives examples of many songs composed and sung by young people, especially girls; and many other Indian tribes, Algonkian, Iroquois, etc., possess such as well. When Darwin reached Tahiti, his

arrival was "sung by a young girl in four improvised strophes, which her fellow-maidens accompanied in a pretty chorus "; and among the song-loving people of the islands of the South Sea, the poetic talent develops quite early in both sexes. Among the aborigines of Peake River, in Australia, when a youth - at puberty has undergone the ceremony of tattooing, and, his wounds having healed, is about to return to his fellows, "a young girl selected for the purpose, sings in her own way a song which she has composed, and, amid dancing, merriment, and feasting, the youth is welcomed back to his family and his kin" (326. II. 241). Throughout the Orient woman is a dancer and a singer. India has her bayadères and nautch-girls, whose dancing and singing talents are world-known.

The Gypsies, too, that wander-folk of the world, are famed for their love-songs and fortune-telling rhymes, which the youth and girlhood among them so often know how to make and use. Crawford, who has translated the Kalevala, the great epic of the Finns, tells us, "The natural speech of this people is poetry. The young men and maidens, the old men and matrons, in their interchange of ideas unwittingly fall into verse" (423. I. xxvi.). Among the young herdsmen and shepherdesses of the pastoral peoples of Europe and Asia, the same precocity of song prevails. With songs of youth and maiden, the hills and valleys of Greece and Italy resound as of old. In his essay on the Popular Songs of Tuscany, Mr. J. A. Symonds observes (540. 600, 602): "Signor Tigri records by name a little girl called Cherubina, who made Rispetti by the dozen, as she watched her sheep upon the hills." When Signor Tigri asked her to dictate to him some of her songs, she replied: "Oh Signore! ne dico tanti quando li canto!... ma ora. . . bisognerebbe averli tutti in visione; se no, proprio non vengono, Oh Sir! I say so many, when I sing... but now . . . one must have them all before one's mind. . . if not, they do not come properly." World-applicable as the boy grows out of childhood - with some little change of season with the varying clime are the words of Tennyson:

“In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,"

and everywhere, if poetry and song be not indeed the very offspring of love, they are at least twin-born with it.