Rustic Sounds Part 6

The late Mr. Welch, in his interesting book on Recorders, pointed out {107} that _sambucus_ the elder, _calamus_ the reed, and _cicuta_ the hemlock all occur in cla.s.sic verse in relation to rustic music. Indeed the word calamus still lives, though corrupted to the French chalumeau and still further altered to the German Schalmei and the English shawm.

Welch doubts whether hemlock or similar stems would be strong enough for the suggested purpose. They certainly would not stand rough usage, but it is possible to make a taborer's pipe out of an _Angelica_ stem, for I have one. It is husky and out of tune, but it shows the thing to be possible.

This connexion between music and the form of plants is not without interest from a wider point of view. We ask ourselves why hollow cylinders occur so commonly in vegetable architecture. That rough teacher, the struggle for life, has taught plants that a tube is, mechanically speaking, the best way of arranging a limited amount of formative or building material. The hemlock or the reed can thus make stalks of ample strength and at comparatively slight cost. There is romance in the fact that plants made tubular stems to their own private profit for unnumbered ages before the coming of man: the hollow reeds waiting all these aeons till Pan should come and make them musical.

The pipe and tabor have probably come down to us less changed than any other wood-wind instrument, with the possible exception of the panpipes; both flutes and flageolets have become covered with keys, while the pipe still has no more than three aboriginal holes, one for the thumb behind and two for the fingers in front. I have wasted some time in trying to make out how the early taborers held their pipes, but musical instruments are generally drawn with hopeless inaccuracy. I have been rewarded by finding that a boy in Luca della Robbia's bas-relief (Fig. 5) at Florence holds the pipe just as I do, {108a} between the ring and little fingers, which keep the instrument steady even when all three holes are uncovered.

There is an interesting point connected with the true or French flageolet. This instrument has six holes arranged in two triads, a thumb and two fingers of the right hand, and the same for the left, so that if all holes are open there would seem to be nothing to steady the pipe.

But in Mr. Welch's book (p. 50) is a figure from Greeting's _Pleasant Companion _{108b} showing how the flageolet should be held, and this, curiously enough, is one of the best views of what I hold to be the proper grip for the taborer's pipe.

The tabor is still much as it was in Fra Angelico's day (judging from the angel above referred to), and indeed in earlier times, as shown in the piping angel in Lincoln Cathedral. We can see what a drum-maker calls the ropes and braces {109a} for tightening the parchment; the snares are also shown in many early drawings of tabors. These are pieces of gut or of horse-hair, stretched across the drum-head, which add a spirited rattle to its tone. Why the first edition of the _Dictionary of Music_ went out of its way to say that the tabor had no snares I cannot guess.

In many of the mediaeval drawings the artist is shown beating his drum on the snare side. I had fancied that this was only one more instance of the bad drawing of musical instruments, but when I saw the careful work of Luca della Robbia, in which the tabors are all beaten on the snare side, I could no longer doubt. I was, however, glad to find in a French account {109b} of the Provencal 3-holed pipe or galoubet, that this custom survives. In Luca della Robbia's work a single snare-cord is shown instead of four to six catgut lines as in modern drums and this is also true of the Provencal instrument. So that both the characteristics that seemed strange to me in Luca's tabor survive in Provence.

It may not be generally known that the French for the snare of a drum is _timbre_; this is the original meaning of the word, and its familiar use to mean the characteristic tone of a musical sound is later. According to Darmstetter the word 'timbre' is own brother to 'tambour,' both being derived from a low Latin form of tympanum.

The tabor-stick has changed since the early centuries. In some of the old drawings the taborer is striking his instrument with a bludgeon, instead of the light and elegant sticks such as are to be seen in Mr.

Manning's collection at Oxford. Such implements were doubtless treasured by the taborer. Valmajour, the tabourinaire in Daudet's _Numa Roumestan_, possessed a drum-stick which had been in the family for 200 years.

The way of holding the drum has not always been the same. Nowadays we are told to hang it from the thumb or wrist. But in many early drawings it is apparently firmly strapped or tied to the forearm, or even above the elbow. {110a} The Lincoln Angel and Luca's boy have tabors supported by a string round the neck, and this I find to be the best method.

I hope that the drum may long survive in Provence with its ancient companion the pipe. {110b} A different instrument, however, supplies an accompaniment to the galoubet in the Basque provinces. It is a rough sort of lyre with six or seven strings tuned alternately to the tonic and dominant, which beaten with a stick make a drone ba.s.s to the pipe. It has the attractively savage name of _toon-toona_, an imitative word like tom-tom; the galoubet is called the _cherula_.

From a French cyclopaedia I learn that in Provence the taborer's art was a secret pa.s.sed on from father to son, a mystery they refused to teach for money. They appeared to hold the patriotic opinion that the art of playing the galoubet, or as they call it, the _flutet_, has never spread from Provence because of its extreme difficulty. This has been a comfort to me in my attempts to play the pipe and tabor.

APPENDIX I DRAWINGS AND CARVINGS OF PIPERS

At the risk of being tedious in the way of repet.i.tion I have thought it worth while to put together a rough list of the ill.u.s.trations of pipe and tabor which I have met with.

The earliest representation of a player on the 3-holed pipe, of which I have any knowledge, is the beautiful figure in the Angel Choir at Lincoln. Its date is, I believe, 1270, and it has been injured so that it is not possible to be sure of the manner in which the pipe is held.

The tabor is suspended by means of a string round the neck.

The most careful representation of our instrument is that by Luca della Robbia, figured at p. 102, in which what I call the correct grip is given.

In Pierpoint Morgan's _Catalogue of Early Printed Books_, Vol II., p.

118, are some ill.u.s.trations from Gafori, 1492. The pipe is quite incorrectly held, more than two fingers being employed while the thumb is free.

_Ibid._, Vol III., p. 82. In a figure from Pierre Michaud's _Dance des Aveugles_, 1485, the pipe has four instead of two holes on the upper surface.

_Ibid._, Vol III., p. 86. The pipe is incorrect, the holes being too far from the lower end of the instrument; the hand is wrongly given according to our standards, the little finger being flourished in the air. The tabor is suspended from the hand as in the English style, and is struck on the snare side.

In Kemp's _Nine Daies Wonder_ (see above p. 102) the drawing of the pipe is not instructive.

In Strutt's _Sports and Pastimes_ there are several early drawings of performers on the 3-holed pipe. The grip in the majority is correct, _i.e._ there are three fingers visible, two covering the holes and the ring finger gripping against the little finger underneath. The ill.u.s.trations are also correct in the fingers being close to the lower end of the pipe.

In Betley Hall, Staffordshire, is a painted gla.s.s window, probably dating from 1535, in which a piper is represented. Mr. Tollet, a former squire of Betley, gave an account of it in Johnson and Steevens' Shakspeare, which is reprinted in a privately published book by Barthomley. The pipe is a conical tube, on which four fingers are represented; it could not, I believe, have been drawn from a model.

In Mahillon's _Catalogue_ i., p. 375, is a figure of a Basque playing a 3-holed pipe, and accompanying himself on the tountouna, a rough stringed instrument. The grip seems to be carefully drawn, but it is hard to see how it could be efficient, only two fingers being seen on the upper surface of the pipe. On the other hand, in a photograph of a Basque playing the same instrument (which I owe to the kindness of a correspondent), the grip is like that figured by Mahillon.

Finally, in _Punch_, November 13, 1907, a 3-holed pipe is incorrectly drawn. The bore of the instrument is conical, the holes are incorrectly given, and the hand is wrong.

APPENDIX II THE FINGERING OF THE 3-HOLED PIPER

The following diagram gives the fingerings which I have found to be best for a 3-holed pipe, a copy of an old one in the possession of Mr.

Manning, of Oxford, to whom I am indebted for much kindly a.s.sistance.

[Picture: Fig. 6. 3-holed pipe fingering]

The fingerings are given for the keys D and G. I have not attempted to play in other keys. For each note the upper circle represents the thumbhole; 1 and 2 are for the first and second fingers respectively.

The black circles are supposed to be closed, the white are open. Holes that are half open are represented by circles half white, half black. In the case of A2 and B2 the circles are three-quarter black; this means that a very minute crack is left open.

It is important to remember that each pipe has its individuality. For instance, in one of my instruments G must have the thumb hole completely open, and the alternate fingering (with the index hole closed) is quite out of tune. The note E is sometimes sharp; in the pipe, the fingerings of which are given in fig. 6, this fault is corrected by means of a thin metal lining to the lower hole.

VIII STEPHEN HALES {115} 16771761

In attempting to give a picture of any man's life and work it is well to follow the rule of the _Dictionary of National Biography_, and begin with the dates of his birth and death. Stephen Hales was born in 1677 and died in 1761, having had experiences of the reigns of seven sovereigns.

The authorities for his life are given in my article on Hales in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. Botanists in general probably take their knowledge of the main facts of his life from Sachs' _History of Botany_. It is therefore worth while to point out that both the original and the English translation (1890) contain the incorrect statement that Hales was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, and that he held the living of Riddington, whereas he is one of the glories of Corpus, and was perpetual curate of Teddington. These inaccuracies, however, are trifles in relation to the great and striking merits of Sachs' _History_, a work which, to my thinking, exhibits the strength and brilliance of the author's mind as clearly as any of his more technical writings. Sachs was no niggling biographer, and his broad vigorous outlines must form the basis of what anyone, who follows him, can write about the botanists of a past day.

To return to Hales' birth. It is of interest to note how he fits into the changing procession of lives, to see what great men overlap his youth, who were his contemporaries in his maturity, and who were appearing on the scientific stage as he was leaving it.

Sir Isaac Newton was the dominant figure in English science while Hales was developing. He died in 1727, the year in which Hales published his _Vegetable Staticks_, a book, which like the _Origin of Species_, appeared when its author was 50 years of age. Newton was at the zenith of his fame when Hales was a little boy of 10-his _Principia_ having been published in 1687, and when Hales went up to Cambridge in 1696 he must have seen the great man coming from his rooms {116a} in the N.E. corner of the Great Court of Trinity-that corner where Newton's and other more modern ghosts surely walk-Macaulay who used to read, pacing to and fro by the chapel, {116b} and Thackeray who, like his own Esmond, lived "near to the famous Mr. Newton's lodgings." In any case there can be no doubt that the genius of Newton cast its light on Hales, as Sachs has clearly pointed out (_Hist. Bot._, Eng. Tr., p. 477). Another great man influenced Hales, namely Robert Boyle, who was born 1627 and died 1691.

John Mayow again, that brilliant son of Oxford, whose premature death at 39 in 1679 was so heavy a blow to science, belongs to the same school as Hales-the school which was within an ace of founding a rational chemistry, but which was separated from the more obvious founders of that science by the phlogiston-theory of Becchers and Stahl. I do not find any evidence that Hales was influenced by the phlogistic writers, and this is comprehensible enough, if, as I think, he belongs to the school of Mayow and Boyle.

The later discoverers in chemistry are of the following dates, Black 17281799, Cavendish 17311810, Priestley 17331804, Scheele 17421786, Lavoisier 1743, guillotined 1794. These were all born about the time of Hales' zenith, nor did he live {117} to see the great results they accomplished. But it should not be forgotten that Hales' chemical work made more easy the triumphant road they trod.

I have spoken of Hales in relation to chemists and physicists because, though essentially a physiologist, he seems to me to have been a chemist and physicist who turned his knowledge to the study of life, rather than a physiologist who had some chemical knowledge.

Whewell points out in his _History of the Inductive __Sciences_ {118a} that the physiologist asks questions of Nature in a sense differing from that of the physicist. The _Why_? of the physicist meant _Through what causes_? that of the physiologist-_to what end_? This distinction no longer holds good, and if it is to be applied to Hales it is a test which shows him to be a physicist. For, as Sachs shows, though Hales was necessarily a teleologist in the theological sense, he always asked for purely mechanical explanations. He was the most unvitalistic of physiologists, and I think his explanations suffered from this cause.

For instance, he seems to have held that to compare the effect of heat on a growing root to the action of the same cause on a thermometer {118b} was a quite satisfactory proceeding. And there are many other pa.s.sages in _Vegetable Staticks_ where one feels that his speculations are too heavy for his knowledge.

Something must be said of Hales' relation to his predecessors and successors in botanical work. The most striking of his immediate predecessors were Malpighi 16281694, Grew 16281711, Ray 16271705, and Mariotte (birth unknown, died 1684); and of these the three first were born one hundred years before the publication of _Vegetable Staticks_.

Malpighi and Grew were essentially plant-anatomists, though both dealt in physiological speculations. Their works were known to Hales, but they do not seem to have influenced him.

We have seen that as a chemist Hales is somewhat of a solitary figure, standing between what may be called the periods of Boyle and of Cavendish. This is even more striking in his botanical position, for here he stands in the solitude of all great original inquirers. We must go back to Van Helmont, 15771644, to find anyone comparable to him as an experimentalist. His successors have discovered much that was hidden from him; but consciously or unconsciously they have all learned from him the true method and spirit of physiological work.

It may be urged that in exalting Hales I am unfair to Malpighi. It may be fairer to follow Sachs in linking these great men together, and to insist on the wonderful fact that before Malpighi's book in 1671, vegetable physiology was still where Aristotle left it, whereas 56 years later, in 1727, we find in Hales' book an experimental science in the modern sense.

It should not be forgotten that students of animal physiology agree with botanists as to Hales' greatness. A writer in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ speaks of him as "the true founder of the modern experimental method in physiology."