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Prelude. |
3 |
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admitted than in that of records taken down from a language varying with every untutored speaker. Every one is familiar with the game in which an anecdote, whispered along a rank of ten persons— each noting down the same as it passes—is proved to arrive at the end of its journey marvellously transformed, sometimes almost past recognition. How much more must this be the chance of melodies carried over sea and land by travellers to dwellers in lonely places; handed down by those having high, or low, or no voices, from spinning-wheel to spinning-wheel, from ' knitter in the sun to knitter in the sun,' during the ages preceding those when the manuscript recorder (supposing him competent to record) began his task. The memory has not merely to provide for tune, but for tone also, and without any certain appeal to musical diapason. There are memories which are organically incorrect; of this I am a living example. I have met no one with quicker and more exact retentive power than myself, and it has been in incessant exercise during thirty years; but not a few of these had elapsed before I discovered that I habitually heard every musical sound half a note too sharp; and this without respect to the pitch to which the instrument or
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