tell the Romany how we can sing.  Listen!”

And I listened to the strangest, wildest, and sweetest singing I ever had heard,—the singing of Lurleis, of sirens, of witches.  First, one damsel, with an exquisitely clear, firm voice, began to sing a verse of a love-ballad, and as it approached the end the chorus stole in, softly and unperceived, but with exquisite skill, until, in a few seconds, the summer breeze, murmuring melody over a rippling lake, seemed changed to a midnight tempest, roaring over a stormy sea, in which the basso of the kālo shureskro (the black captain) pealed like thunder.  Just as it died away a second girl took up the melody, very sweetly, but with a little more excitement,—it was like a gleam of moonlight on the still agitated waters, a strange contralto witch-gleam; and then again the chorus and the storm; and then another solo yet sweeter, sadder, and stranger,—the movement continually increasing, until all was fast, and wild, and mad,—a locomotive quickstep, and then a sudden silence—sunlight—the storm had blown away.

Nothing on earth is so like magic and elfin-work as when women burst forth into improvised melody.  The bird only “sings as his bill grew,” or what he learned from the elders; yet when you hear birds singing in woodland green, throwing out to God or the fairies irrepressible floods of what seems like audible sunshine, so well does it match with summer’s light, you think it is wonderful.  It is mostly when you forget the long training of the prima donna, in her ease and apparent naturalness, that her song is

sweetest.  But there is a charm, which was well known of old, though we know it not to-day, which was practiced by the bards and believed in by their historians.  It was the feeling that the song was born of the moment; that it came with the air, gushing and fresh from the soul.  In reading the strange stories of the professional bards and scalds and minstrels of the early Middle Age, one is constantly bewildered at the feats of off-hand composition which were exacted of the poets among Celts or Norsemen.  And it is evident enough that in some mysterious way these singers knew how to put strange pressure on the Muse, and squeeze strains out of her in a manner which would have been impossible at present.

Yet it lingers here and there on earth among wild, strange people,—this art of making melody at will.  I first heard it among Nubian boatmen on the Nile.  It was as manifest that it was composed during the making as that the singers were unconscious of their power.  One sung at first what may have been a well-known verse.  While singing, another voice stole in, and yet another, softly as shadows steal into twilight; and ere I knew it all were in a great chorus, which fell away as mysteriously, to become duos, trios,—changing in melody in strange, sweet, fitful wise, as the faces seen in the golden cloud in the visioned aureole of God blend, separate, burn, and fade away ever into fresher glory and tints incarnadined.

Miss C. F. Gordon Cumming, after informing us that “it is utterly impossible to give you the faintest shadow of an idea of the fascination of Tahitian himénes,” proceeds, as men in general and women in particular invariably do, to give what the writer

really believes is a very good description indeed.  ’T is ever thus, and thus ’t will ever be, and the description of these songs is so good that any person gifted with imagination or poetry cannot fail to smile at the preceding disavowal of her ability to give an idea.

These himénes are not—and here such of my too expectant young lady-readers as are careless in spelling will be sadly disappointed—in any way connected with weddings.  They are simply the natural music of Tahiti, or strange and beautiful part-songs.  “Nothing you have ever heard in any other country,” says our writer, “bears the slightest resemblance to these wild, exquisite glees, faultless in time and harmony, though apparently each singer introduces any variations which may occur to him or to her.  Very often there is no leader, and apparently all sing according to their own sweet will.  One voice commences; it may be that of an old native, with genuine native words (the meaning of which we had better not inquire), or it may be with a Scriptural story, versified and sung to an air originally from Europe, but so completely Tahitianized that no mortal could recognize it, which is all in its favor, for the wild melodies of this isle are beyond measure fascinating.

“After one clause of solo, another strikes in—here, there, everywhere—in harmonious chorus.  It seems as if one section devoted themselves to pouring forth a rippling torrent of ‘Ra, ra, ra—ra—ra!’ while others burst into a flood of ‘La, la—la—la—la!’  Some confine their care to sound a deep, booming bass in a long-continued drone, somewhat suggestive (to my appreciative Highland ear) of our own bagpipes.  Here and there high falsetto notes

strike in, varied from verse to verse, and then the choruses of La and Ra come bubbling in liquid melody, while the voices of the principal singers now join in unison, now diverge as widely as it is possible for them to do, but all combine to produce the quaintest, most melodious, rippling glee that ever was heard.”

This is the himéne; such the singing which I heard in Egypt in a more regular form; but it was exactly as the writer so admirably sets it forth (and your description, my lady traveler, is, despite your disavowal, quite perfect and a himéne of itself) that I heard the gypsy girls of St. Petersburg and of Moscow sing.  For, after a time, becoming jolly as flies, first one voice began with “La, la, la—la—la!” to an unnamed, unnamable, charming melody, into which went and came other voices, some bringing one verse or no verse, in unison or alone, the least expected doing what was most awaited, which was to surprise us and call forth gay peals of happy laughter, while the “La, la, la—la—la!” was kept up continuously, like an accompaniment.  And still the voices, basso, soprano, tenor, baritone, contralto, rose and fell, the moment’s inspiration telling how, till at last all blended in a locomotive-paced La, and in a final roar of laughter it ended.

I could not realize at the time how much this exquisite part-singing was extemporized.  The sound of it rung in my head—I assure you, reader, it rings there yet when I think of it—like a magic bell.  Another day, however, when I begged for a repetition of it, the girls could recall nothing of it.  They could start it again on any air to the unending strain of “La—la—la;” but the “La—la—la” of the

previous evening was avec les neiges d’antan, with the smoke of yesterday’s fire, with the perfume and bird-songs.  “La, la, la—la—la!”

In Arab singing, such effects are applied simply to set forth erotomania; in negro minstrelsy, they are degraded to the lowest humor; in higher European music, when employed, they simply illustrate the skill of composer and musician.  The spirit of gypsy singing recalled by its method and sweetness that of the Nubian boatmen, but in its general effect I could think only of those strange fits of excitement which thrill the red Indian and make him burst into song.  The Abbé Domenech [42] has observed that the American savage pays attention to every sound that strikes upon