And "Sweet Kitty Wells":
When the birds were singing in the morning,
And the myrtle and the ivy were in bloom,
And the sun on the hill was a dawning.
It was then we laid her in the tomb.
Hear what kind old Thackeray says:
I heard a humorous balladist not long since—a minstrel with wool on his head, and an ultra-Ethiopian complexion, who performed a negro ballad that I confess moistened these spectacles in a most unexpected manner. I have gazed at thousands of tragedy queens dying on the stage, and expiring in appropriate blank verse, and I never wanted to wipe them. They have looked up with due respect be it said, at many scores of clergymen in the pulpit without being dimmed; and behold a vagabond, with a corked face and a banjo, sings a little song, strikes a wild note, which sets the heart thrilling with happy pity.
I am afraid that the old organ grinder already mentioned, never realized the power of music to incite to tears, laughter, or dancing, or to draw not only men, but beasts and birds to the feet of the player, as it has been stated in popular story. He was scarcely able to lure spectators enough into the museum, with all the attraction of the exhibition thrown into the scale, to pay its scanty expenses. Yet we hear in a hyperbolic ditty how, with no instrument but his mouth, a country boy goes out at nightfall, and charms all inferior animate creation with his whistling:
Supper was over, the boy went out.
He passed thro' the yard and over the stile.
The big dog barked as he went along by.
And followed him nearly a mile.
And he sat him down on a hickory log,
And whistled a lively tune, this boy!
Which took the ear of this barking dog,
And he wagged his tail for joy!
The beetle stopped from pinching the fly.
The toad in his hole stood still.
And the tom-tit heard with a tear in his eye.
And a fishing worm in his bill;
And the grasshopper said, "I know that air,
But I cannot whistle it so—
The tune of the man with no hair on his head,
Where hair ever ought to grow."
In the old traditions we have stories of the wondrous power of music, in the fables of Orpheus and Pan, and in the accounts of the horn of Oberon, which would make every one dance who was not of irreproachable character; of the harp of Sigurd, which caused inanimate objects to caper in the wildest confusion; of the Scotch Glenkindie's harp, which would
Harp a fish out o' saut water.
Or water out of a stane;
and of the Kandele, invented by Wäinämöinen, the supreme god
