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Music from the West. 189 |
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takable family likeness one to the other, they have a certain stately evenness, without insipidity, which gives great pleasure.
The instrument of Wales, the harp, has lent itself largely to this symmetrical formation, because it is not an incomplete instrument. With its three rows of strings—the third, so far as I understand, anticipating the pedals of the modern harp, by which accidental flats and sharps are now procured —there is little temptation for those caprices of interval which have been generated by instruments with a drone, such as the bagpipe, or by stringed ones less elaborate in facturc.
The charm of the harp is not merely such as belongs to the intimate correspondence betwixt master and servant which it seems to encourage, but in its own peculiar tones. It has, I think, been too much undervalued in our day, because of its limited powers in modulation. The harp, however, continues to be one of the primitive sources of melody, not merely because of its peculiar tone, but because of its simplicity of scale. The following is not one of the more rare tunes, but not therefore the less beautiful. |
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