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Scan 64
Musical instruments, 1908
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 44. See the scan on archive.org.
1grew with the others on the bank. The baffled Pan ruefully viewed the swaying mass, and as the subtle music of the wind blowing over the broken stalks stole into his heart, he quickly grasped the suggestion and pulled a reed, and placing it to his lips, told of his love in dulcet tones, wooing as he had never wooed with words.
3The antiquarian, on the other hand, explains that the bone pipe existed before the reed, fashioned in many cases from the bones of the slain enemy or the beast of prey. Even now the Lama priests use the bones of their departed brethren in the making of their temple music. The mound builders have left such musical relics. Indeed, we are told that there was a time when no reeds grew, and rocks were everywhere. It was then that the cave man lived, and outside his door there ever lay whitening bones, full of suggestions. When and why man was inclined to put an open pipe to his lips for the production of sound, baffles the theorist.
5The Egyptians ascribed the honor of discovering the principle of plucked strings to Thoth, their Mercury, who in passing along the bank of the Nile after a rainy season, struck with his foot the skeleton of a tortoise which had been left on the bank by the receding waters. The dried muscles and tendons had been drawn taut by the wind and the sun, and the movement caused them to vibrate and produce the sound which attracted the god. He secured the skeleton, and it became the first lyre. The Greeks tell of a more simple beginning of stringed instruments. Apollo and Artemis were enjoying the hunt, when Apollo perceived the twanging of his sister's bow string, and the deadly weapon of the hunt was transformed into the foundation of the violin and of the piano. The Grecian story is more logical, as primitive man in many instances has been found converting his bow into an instrument whose string he plucks to produce musical tones. There are many possible explanations of the origin of musical instruments, and man's imagination has added much that is picturesque.
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