The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn Volume I Part 24

Sing the Slaughter-lover blue Broad and true!

Sing the Slaughter-lover blue!

_O Fire!--O Fire!

O Steel!--O Steel!..._

Battle where the savage Sword Is sole Lord,-- Battle of the savage Sword!

_O Fire!--O Fire!

O Steel!--O Steel!..._

O Sword! mighty King!

Battle-King!

O Sword! mighty King!...

_O Fire!--O Fire!

O Steel!--O Steel!..._

Let the Rainbow's magic rays Round thee blaze!-- Let the Rainbow round thee blaze!

_O Fire!--O Fire!

O Steel!--O Steel!

O Fire!--O Fire!

O Steel and Fire!

O Oak!--O Oak!

O Earth!--O Waves!

O Waves!--O Earth!

O Earth and Oak!_

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, February, 1884.

DEAR K.,--Charley Johnson's coming down to spend a week with me. I shall be soon enjoying his Rabelaisian mirth, and his Gargantuesque laughter.

He is going to Havana, and I shall ask him to get, if possible, the music of the erotic mime-dance,--the Zamacueca of the Creoles.

I see they are offering prizes for a good opera. Why don't you compose an opera? I can suggest the most tremendous, colossal, Ragnarockian subject imaginable--knocks Wagner endwise and all the trilogies: "THE WOOING OF THE VIRGIN OF POJA," from the "Kalewala." The "Kalewala" is the only essentially _musical_ epopea I know of. Orpheus is a mere clumsy charlatan to Wainamoinen and the wooers. The incidents are more charmingly enormous than anything in the Talmud, Ramayana, or Mahabharata. O! the old woman who talks to the Moon!--and the wicked singer who turns all that hear him to stone!--and the phantoms created by magical chant!--and the songs that make the stars totter in the frosty sky!--and the melodies that melt the gates of iron! And then, too, the episode of the Eternal Smith, by whose art the blue vault of heaven was wrought into shape; and the weird sleigh-ride over the Frozen Sea; and the words at whose utterance "the waters of the great deep lifted a thousand heads to listen!" And the story of the Earth-giant, aroused by magical force from his slumber of innumerable years, to teach to the Magician the runes by which all things are created,--the enchanted songs by which the Beginning was made to Begin. If you have not read it, try to get a _prose_ translation: no poetical version can preserve the delightful goblinry and elfishness of the original, whereof the metre rings even as the ringing of a mighty harp.

I have also a delightful Malay poem which would make a much finer operatic subject or dramatic subject than the European _feeries_ modelled upon the Hindoo drama of Sakuntala, or, as my French translator writes it, _Sacountala_. I have an inexhaustible quarry of monstrous and diabolical inspiration.

Yours truly, etc.

I spend whole days in vocal efforts--vain ones--to imitate those delicious arabesques about the Name of Allah in the Muezzin's Song,--and do suddenly awake by night with a Voice in my ears, as of a Summons to Prayer. Bismillah!--enormous is G.o.d!

(Punishment No. 2)

_Monograph upon the Music of the Witches' Sabbath._

_Dictionary of the Musical Instruments of all Nations._

With 50,000 wood engravings.

_The Musical Legends of All Nations._

By H. Ed. Krehbiel and Lafcadio Hearn. Seven Vols. in 8vo, with 100 chromolithographs and 2000 eau-fortes. Price $300 per vol. 24th edition.

_On the Howling Dervishes_, and on the melodies of the six other orders of Dervishes. With music.

_The Song of the Muezzin in All Moslem Countries._ From Western Morocco to the Chinese Sea. Nine hundred different Notations of the Chant--with an Appendix treating of the Chant in the Oases and in the Soudan, as affected by African influence. Price $8000.

_Dance-Music of the Ancient Occident_, 1700 Ex.

_Temple-Melodies of the Ancient and Modern World._ Vol. I, China. Vol.

II, India. Vol III, Rome. Vol. IV, Greece. Vol. V, Egypt, etc.

(To be continued.)

TO H. E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, February, 1884.

DEAR KREHBIEL,--Please don't let my importunacy urge you to write when you have little time and leisure. I only want to hear from you when it gives you pleasure and kills time. Never mind if I take a temporary notion to write every day--you know I don't mean to be unreasonable.

Now, as I have your postal card I'll cease the publication of my imaginary musical library, and will reserve that exquisite torture for some future occasion when I shall think you have treated me horribly.

Just so soon as this beastly weather changes I'll go to New York, and hope you'll be able--say in April--to give me a few days' loafing-time.

I'm afraid, however, I shall have to leave my Ideas behind me. I know I could never squeeze them under or over the Brooklyn Bridge. Furthermore, I'm afraid the Elevated R. R. cars might run over my Ideas and hurt them. In fact, 't is only in the vast swamps of the South, where the converse of the frogs is even as the roar of a thousand waters, that my Ideas have room to expand.

Your banjo article delighted me,--of course, there is a great deal that is completely new to me therein. By the way, have you noticed the very curious looking harps of the Niam-Niams in Schweinfurth? They seem to me rather nearly related to the banjo in some respects. I am glad my little notes were of some use to you. I will take good care of the proof.

Every time I see anything you'd like, I'll send it on. The etymology of the banjo is a very interesting thing; perhaps I may find something fresh on the subject some day.

Yours enthusiastically, L. HEARN.

I know you would not care to hear about "the thousand different instruments to which the daughter of Pharaoh introduced King Solomon on the day he married her," because the names of the instruments and the melodies which were performed upon them and the various chants to all the idols of Egypt which the daughter of Pharaoh taught Solomon are utterly forgotten. Yet, by the Kabbalistic rules of Gematria and Temurah might they not be exhumed?

In treatise Shekalim of Seder Mo'ed of the Talmud of Jerusalem it is related on the authority of Rabbi Aha, that Hogrus ben Levi, who directed the singing in the temple, "knew a vast number of melodies, and possessed a particular talent for modulating them in an agreeable voice.

_By thrusting his thumb into his mouth he produced many and various sorts of chants, so that his brethren, the Cohanim, were utterly amazed thereat._"

Hast read in Chap. XII of the Treatise Shabbat (Seder Mo'ed) concerning that lost Hebrew musical instrument, unlike any other instrument known in the history of mankind?...

TO H.E. KREHBIEL

NEW ORLEANS, March, 1884.

DEAR KREHBIEL,--I was quite glad to get your short letter, knowing how busy you are. Johnson changed his mind about Havana, as the season there has been very unhealthy; and for the time being I am disappointed in regard to the Spanish-Creole music. But it is only a question of a little while when I shall get it. I sent you the other day some Madagascar music. You will observe it is arranged for men and women alternately. By the way, speaking of the refrain, I think you ought to find it scientifically treated in Herbert Spencer's "Sociology;" for in that giant summary of all human knowledge, everything relating to the arts of life is considered comparatively and historically. I have not got it: indeed I could not afford so immense a series as a mere work of reference, and life is too short. But you can easily refer to it in your public libraries. This reminds me of a curious fact I observed in reading Tylor--the similarity of an Australian song to a Greek chorus at Sparta,--at least, the construction thereof. You remember the lines, sung alternately by old men, young men, and boys:--

(OLD MEN) "We once were stalwart youths."

(YOUNG MEN) "We are: if thou likest, test our strength."

(BOYS) "We shall be, and far better too!"

Now Tylor quotes this Australian chant:--