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National Music of the World. |
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—their defensive habits in point of litigation—the somewhat remote beauty of their district, which has features and attractions of its own—these things have all conspired to retain in the music of the Principality a certain primitive character. I think that while Irishmen and Scotchmen have been fighting for certain airs, and while, of late, Englishmen have been rushing in to get as much credit for England out of Ireland and Scotland as there was any chance of getting, no one has laid hands on the tunes of Wales; no one has said, in regard to any particular melody, ' This is a tune which may have got into your country, but which is our tune.'
The symmetry of the Welsh tunes distinguishes them from those of Scotland and Ireland. In the latter there is a perversity of interval and of modulation, which may be partly ascribed to imperfect transcription, but not altogether. In the Welsh tunes I cannot recall a single irregular sequence, or a single rhythm awry. In many of them there is to be remarked the old mechanical progression, 'Alia Rosalia,' which it seems especially the province of the harp to encourage; in others, as in ' The Rising of the Lark,' there are phrases of six against eight bars; but withal, and bearing as they do an unmis- |
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