The Sun.
London, England, 1849-11-02 00:00:00

OLD TUNES.

BY ELIZA COOK.
We love music dearly : love it with deep and fer-
vent adoration that amounts, we suspect, to " blind
idolatry;" for though the warm impulses of our soul
are ever ready to rush into sublime ecstasy at the sound
of " Handel's Coronation Anthem," they betray an
equal susceptibility at the jingling of 1° Fisher's
Hornpipe" on a demi-piano, with which
a little Italian boy occasionally refreshes
our narrow street. Nay, we even plead guilty
to being touched by the mouth-organ and drum
that, time out of mind, have drowned the groans of
the dying in the matrimonial battle-field of Punch
and Judy. The reeds may be sharp and the sheep-
skin fiat; but we have a happy knack of reconciling
the difference by some mysterious tuning-fork of
Benevolence in our auricular faculties, and often have
we put on a dawdling pace and lingered on our errand
in order to hear the conclusion of a " favourite and
popular air" played in this national style.
Let us observe, that ours is not a solitary taste for
this particular specie; of instrumentation. It is our
fortune now and then to breathe the perfumed a:r of
Belgravia, and enjoy the society of certain juvenile
hot- house plants, who have at th it command golden
strings and ivory keys, with the fascinating services
of Buclisa and Muscheles ; but we have been present
when, by chance, the vulgar " Row-de dow," and
I'andean treble of uncertain cader.ce, ventured in that
elite neighbourhood. We only wish we e,:uld convey
to our readers the actual scene that ever ensure. Noble
mammas may chide with dignified astonishment, go-
vernesses may endeavour to exert the authority of
place, and aristocratic indifference to such " low
noise" be insisted on—but in vain! We have seen
the Hon. Master Adolphus in a state of quivering
trepidation and nervous flutter from top to toe, and
the Hon. Miss Emily a degree worse. We have
seen them rush to the plate-glass windows with
such rude " physical force " power, that we have
trembled for the consequences, and there they
have stood pressing their rounded cheeks, and
snubbing their pretty little noses against the bar-
rier panes with feverish anxiety and expectation,
praying that the" music" may come before the house;
and if it really and positively does approach with
all the magic thereunto belonging, the jumping and
clapping of hands in hysterical delight are rather
without the pale of " gentility." So we have disco-
vered, to our great satisfaction, that the drum and
mouth-organ hold the same primitive influence over
the darlings of a duke as over the plauges of a pauper.
Thus, we flatter ourselves, that ours is an orthodox
taste and experience, nor blush in confessing our
partiality for the simple melodies of our country,
illustrated by our wandering minstrels.
We again declare that we love music dearly; from
the "tun, turn" of the Ojibbeway Indians to the
" Lydian measure" poured forth by the gifted Lind ;
yet we have a lurking affection for a peculiar order
of harmony that clings to us with religious strength,
and despite our general Apollonian free-thinking, we
do homage at a certain style of melody with a
fervour exceeding all that we render up to others.
There is a character of music which has an indispu-
table power to lead us by our long ears into the very
Charybdis of Enthusiasm ; and what think ye, gentle
reader, may this character of music be? Why, it is
our grandmothers' jig tunes and our grandmothers'
fireside ditties. Yes, we instinctively worship the
blithe triplets of "Sir Roger de Coverly," and vene-
rate the silvery sadness about " Crazy Jane."
There is something in the spirit of " olden tunes"
that haunts our heart with sacred witchery. Be it
in mirth, or be it in melancholy, there is nothing
operates so intensely on our nature as the melodies
long familiar to us. Our feet never suffer so much from
imposed restraint when a modern waltz or fashionable
polka is played, as when " The Campbells are
Conlin', " or " Haste to the Wedding," is struck up
with tantalizing brilliancy. We feel no thickness in
the throat over the sentiment of " Casta Diva," as we
do while the simple pathos of " John Anderson my
Jo," or " Poor Mary Anne," arrests our bosom.
Yes ! Goth like as it may appear, we confess our
passion for all the vulgar, common-place tunes extant,
be they English, Irish, or Scotch.
We believe we could dance with the gout to " St.
Patrick's Day," and sing with the toothache if " We
won't go home till Morning" were chorused around
us. As for " Roy's Wife," despite of her celebrity
for jilting, we are ever ready to be off with her on
her slightest whisper • and " We're a Noddin" has
kept us out of our bed many an extra ten minutes,
when some " little" or big " warbler" has volunteered
it just as the chamber candles were lighted.
When have we tripped so joyously through the
" festive maze," as in the free and easy time of " Christ-
mas jollity" after supper, when young and old, grave
and gay, are enlisted "nolens miens" into "hands
across, down the middle, and up again," while " Katt),
O'Lynch," " The young May Moon," or " Speed the
Plough," was inspiring our ecstatic antics ; and then,
shall we reveal cur foolish ( motions of plaintive sym-
pathy awakened by the " Robin's Petition," or
" Savourneen Dheelish," when a dreamy dimness has
gathered before our eyes, until the very blaze of the
cheerful fire has lost its distinctive form, and we have
seen nothing but the poor varying little bird shivering
in the snow storm, and the exiled wanderer in his
mournful solitude. Oh ! we do love these old tunes
and ditties, and hope we ever shall lore them ; and
how many more are there in this hard-grinding world
who snatch glimpses of happiness from these anti-
, quated sources. How the children of the poor will
cluster round some ragged servitor of Apollo, who
scrapes away at one of these " vulgar tunes," and
how they involuntarily assume attitudes and steps of
most animated though grotesque arrangement.
These steps always appear to us the identical
ones mentioned so often by philosophers, as
being between the sublime and the ridieu-
lous, yet we scarcely dare to smile at the
approach of Ignorance to the altar of Spiritual Beauty,
uncouth as the advance may be. Let them shuffle
and twist, and sidle arid jump, in their own uncivilized
way, it is an opportunity for their getting nigher to
God through the medium of an "old tune."
And would the mother do without these" old tunes"
to hush her infant to rest, or arouse it into chuckling
joy ? Who ever heard a mother or nurse attempt to
soothe her young one with a scientific bravura, or a
ballad from the latest opera ? Why, the thing is not
to be imagined I No, it is the " old tunes," the quaint
and ancient morsels of common melody, that are
naturally uppermost on the nursery tongue, and pass
from generation to generation with undiminished
charms.

We once tried to get a refractory infant to sleep
under the influence of the polacca in I Puritani. We
laboured unceasingly for one long hour, and seemed
as nigh gaining our point as ever. The imp was
still grizzling and cooing, and stretching and kicking
with most unequivocal evidence of being " wide
awake," and we found we were rolling the stone of
Sisyphus. We betook ourselves to " Auld Lang
Syne ;" the kicking subsided, the grizzling died away
in a confused murmur between a -faint snore and a
deep sigh, and in ten minutes the young rebel was as
fast as the pyramids. The " old tune" had done the
work, and we never intend to experimentalize any
more with new-fangled lullabies.
There are few hearts but what have a grey stone
or two erected in them to the memory of some de-
parted loved ones. These consecrated tablets are
mercifully shadowed by Time into a soft oblivion,
and we are spared the pang of continually tracing
their mournful inscription, until a ray of light is
thrown by some thought-star, and we con over the
sad words with renewed devotion. All poets and
philosophers have discovered how slight a cause
will bring back our warmest recollections, and per-
haps among the strongest links which hold us to
the dead there is none stronger than the " old tune"
which they liked to listen to or used to sing. What
a gush of gentle sorrow will spring in the father's
breast, when by chance he hears the self-same air
that his fair girl learnt years ago, to please him.
The child is missing in his home—her place is vacant
—she is gone from his warm hearth-stone to the cold
sepulchre, but the " old tune" lives on, and has the
power to thrust the world and its allurements from
his mind, to take him back to scenes of bygone hap-
piness, and lead him onward to the future in hope
and faith. The son never forgets the melody that
his mother used to sing to him in his early years,
simply and imperfectly as it might be rendered by
her; yet he was gladdened and excited by it, and he
will recongise it when his own hair is white, and his
limbs tottering, with a tender respect, as the " old
tune" which he loved when he was a boy. Oh !
" old tunes" are blessed things ; and come where and
when they may, the one who is akin to heaven as
well as earth will bow to their influence. Never let
us be ashamed of finding ourselves laid hold of by
Toro Bowling" or " Black-eyed Susan." Let us
not deem it a weakness to detect our feet in an inci-
pient vertigo, at the bidding of " Mrs. M'Leod" or
" Nancy Dawson ;" fee we have little reverence for
the man or woman who is never to be warped from
the frigid proprieties of artificial existence, by the
vulgar interference of " old tunes."—From Eliza
Cook's Journal.

INTERESTING TO LADIES.—An eccentric old ba-
chelor, who lately died at Madras, has left a sum of one
thousand pounds, the interest of which is to be
divided annually into five portions, to be distributed at
the discretion of the minister of St. Cyrus, Kincardine-
shire. Oce portio❑ to be given to the tallest woman
that has been married in the parish during the year, and
one to the shortest. A third portion goes to the eldest
woman married during the year, and the fourth to the
youngest. Will any young lady remain unmarried
St. Cyrus after this ? The strange old bachelor showed
that his intentions were kind, for be directed the firth
snm to be distributed in groceries amongst the poor.—
Lustfries Courier.
CAUNT IN TROUBLE.—The ex• Champion has been
convicted, both at Nottingham and Mansfield, within the
last few days, for trespass in pursuit of game. Consta-
bles paid him a visit in town with summonses.