The Irish standard., 1910-04-23
Waited From One Country
to Another by Travellers
in Course of Ages.
Music Seems to Have Begun
in Erin; Poetry and Legend
in the Orient.
Verify in a Certain Measure
Dispersal of Human Race
After the Deluge.

a good many years ago, says John
j. O'Shcn in the Catholic Standard and
Times OF Philadelphia. it was our priv
ilege to behold and hear an assemblage
OF harpers from various countries
Ireland. Scotland. Wales, Sweden and
some others-in the Rotunda Dublin.
Under the leadership of distin-
guished Swcde, Herr Sioden, and Sir
Robert Stewart, musician and ARCH
aeol"glst of Dublin, the music of the
various countries represented by these
harpers was performed in magnificent
style. and the mode in which the pro.
cess of evolution was developed AZ
the music was brought from one coun.
try to another. by the simple muta>
ton of a bar or two or a change from
original sweet airs, was clearly ex-
planned and Illustrated. AS it is with
music so it is in regard to poetry and
legend. The progress of the music
seemed to have begun in Ireland trav-
cling across to Wales and Scotland,
passing England by altogether, and
the Baltic into the Scandinavian coun.
tries. Poems and legends would ap-
pear, on the other hand, to have be-
gun in the Orient and gone on thence
into Europe by way of Egypt and
Greece. A curious instance of the SIM
ilarity of Ideas, no matter how wide
apart the different nations. is seen in
the legends common to several about
the result of union in death among
lovers In the Percy Reliques we find
in the ballad called "Far Margaret
and Sweet William" who died, the ono
for love, the other for sorrow, the end
ing:
Fair Margaret was buried in the lower
chancel,
And William in the higher;
Out of her breast there sprang a rose,
And out of his a briar
Now, in the Scrvian folk k-poems we
meet with similar but more grace
fully worked out ending TO a piece
called United in Death (Vuk's coll
lectiom
Ger the youth sprang up a verdant
pine tree,
Ger the maid bush with sweet red
roses;
Round the pine tree winds itself tho
roscbush,
AS the silk around bunch of flowers.
The popular old English ballad of
Lady Nancy Bell and Lord Lowell has
an ending very like that of Fair Mar
garct and Sweet William in the
Scotch border poem.
Very many of those old romances.
both in poetry and prose, have been
traced to Oriental sources away back
in the twilight of history A very not:
able instance of the antiquity of such
popular compositions Is the case of the
Grecian story Of the robber called Pro-
| crustes, who was said to be in the
habit of stretching his victims OH a.
bed where, il their limbs We're not
long enough to measure it, he stretched
them by torture until they were the
desired length; and If the limbs Of
others were too long, he chopped their
feet off to make them fit. This old le
gend is matched by one to the sams.
effect in the Talmud, but the re;io'l
where the robber operated is given as
the old city of Gomorrah, in Palestine,
and not any place in Greece, and the. \
name of the robber is omitted. Othei-
wise the legend is precisely the same 4
as that of the Procrustean bed Of
Thrace.
! It is deeply interesting exercise to-
follow the migration of music and
poem and legend, for, among others
uses, it verifies, in a strange measure,
the Biblical story of the dispersal Of:
the human race after the great de-fS
luge, the truth of whose chronicle is
now so marvelously attested by the
silent clay witness of four or i've
J thousand years ago. n;