¹ ANTIQUITY, 1938, XII, 261-289.

² For pentatonic scales see Carl Engel, The Music of the Most Ancient Nations (1864, reprint 1929), chap. IV; A. H. Fox Strangways, The Music of Hindustan (1914); Hjalmar Thuren, Folkesangen paa Fœrøerne (Copenhagen, 1908), 193-225 ; M. Kennedy-Fraser, The Songs of the Hebrides, I, xxviii-xxxiii; Journ. Folk Song Soc. (London), IV, no. 16 (1911), 150-3; also artides in musical dictionaries.

³ Fox Strangways, op. cit., 48, 123.

⁴ Jburn. Folk Song Soc. (London), IV, no. 16 (1911), 143-278.

⁵ A’ Choisir Chiuil (Bayley & Ferguson, Glasgow).

⁶ Songs of Scotland (Boosey & Co.), 2 vols.

⁷ Duncan Johnston, Cronun nan Tonn (Glasgow, 1938).

⁸ The same tendency is very evident in the compositions of John Macdonald of Oban (seven pentatonics among nine tunes examined).

⁹ Edited by C. V. Stanford ; Boosey & Co., 1902-5.

¹⁰ Among Moore’s Irish Melodies the following are virtually pentatonic : ‘Erin, O Erin’ (except third quarter) ; ‘Though dark are our sorrows’ (except third quarter) ; ‘Oft in the stilly night’ ; ‘This life is all chequer’d’ ; ‘As vanquished Erin’ ; and ‘I’d mourn the hopes that leave me’. Many Irish tunes have the melody-formula AABA, where A is the original theme, and B is a related, but different, piece of melody, incomplete in itself, inserted in order to break the monotony of the frequent repetition of A. That B may be much later than A is suggested by the observation that in several tunes in which A is pentatonic, B may be hexatonic, heptatonic, or even chromatic. Similarly, in Scottish tunes a very common formula is ABABA . . . etc., appearing as alternating refrain (A) and verse (B). Here again it is common to find that B is constructed on a more developed scale (e.g. hexatonic or heptatonic) than A (e.g. pentatonic). The recent addition of B to an older A is a known fact in a few instances, e.g. by John Macdonald in Orain Caraid (Glasgow, 1938), p. 4 ; and by Archibald Ferguson in A’ Choisir Chiuil, p. 67.

¹¹ Lucy Broadwood, English Traditional Songs and Carols.

¹² Cecil Sharp and C. L. Marson, Folk Songs from Somerset.

¹³ J. Stokoe and S. Reay, Songs and Ballads of Northern England.

¹⁴ L. A. Bourgault-Ducoudray, Trente Mélodies populaires de Basse-Bretagne (Paris, 1885).

¹⁵ A. P. Graves, The Celtic Song-Book (1928).

¹⁶ Julien Tiersot, Sixty Folksongs of France (Boston, U.S.A., 1915).

¹⁷ R. Gallop, Vingt-Cinq Chansons populaires d’Eskual Herria (Bayonne, 1928) ; A Book of the Basques (1930), chap. VIII.

¹⁸ Armas Launis, Lappische Juoigos-Melodien (Mém. de la Soc. Finno-Ougrienne, XXVI, Helsingfors, 1908). I am indebted to Mrs Gudmund Hatt of Copenhagen for this reference, and for the loan of her own copy.

¹⁹ Suomen Kansan Sävelmiä, vols. I and II

²⁰ Sv. Sveinbjörnsson, Icelandic Folk-songs (Edinburgh, R. W. Pentland).

²¹ Hjalmar Thuren, Folkesangen paa Fœrøerne (Copenhagen, 1908).

²² O. M. Sandvik, Folke-musik i Gudbrandsdalen (Christiania, 1892).

²³ Assar and Olsson, Sverges Melodibok, 1 (Stockholm).

²⁴ Danmarks Melodibog (Copenhagen).

²⁵ The Botsford Collection of Folk-Songs (New York, 1938), II.

²⁶ N. Rimsky-Korsakov, A Hundred Russian Folk Songs (St. Petersburg, 1877), collected between 1810 and 1820, mainly from the Governments of Novgorod and Orlov.

²⁷ A. Härtel, Deutsches Liederlexikon (Leipzig).

²⁸ Hj. Thuren, op. cit., 202.

²⁹ The Botsford Collection of Folk-Songs.

³⁰ Botsford Collection, and L. A. Bourgault-Ducoudray, Trente Mélodies populaires de Grèce et d’Orient (Paris, 1897) ; songs common to both collections counted once only.

³¹ Béla Szilasi, Hungarian Folk-Songs (Budapest, 1935).

³² F. Salvador-Daniel, The Music and Musical Instruments of the Arab.

³³ A. H. Fox Strangways, The Music of Hindustan (Oxford, 1914).

³⁴ Hj. Thuren, op. cit., 193-203.

³⁵ Cecil Sharp, English Folk-Song : Some Conclusions, 45.

³⁶ Carl Engel, The Music of the Most Ancient Nations, 157-162.

³⁷ Oxford Companion to Music (1938), s.v. ‘Harmony’, §4, and ‘Scales’, §10.

³⁸ Thurlow Lieurance, Indian Songs (Chappell & Co., 1913)

³⁹ W. Thalbitzer, Inuit Sange og Danse (Copenhagen, 1939). I am indebted to the author for a copy of this work.

⁴⁰ Rev. G. D. Pike, Jubilee Singers (London, 1873). A characteristic example is ‘Swing low, sweet chariot’.

⁴¹ W. F. Allen, etc., Slave Songs of the United States (New York, 1867).

⁴² Botsford Collection of Folk-songs, I. This mixed group includes Negro, Indian, Creole, Kentucky, Texas, Middle-West, Cowboy, and a chantey. See also Oxford Companion to Music, s.v. ‘United States’, §§6, 7.

⁴³ A. H. Fox Strangways, op. cit., 123.

⁴⁴ Armas Launis, op. cit., Introduction.

⁴⁵ A. H. Fox Strangways, op. cit., 3. It is only fair to say that the words quoted referred originally to a polyphony of the Middle Ages.

⁴⁶ C. K. Wead, ‘Contribution to the History of Musical Scales’, Report of the Smithsonian Institution (for year ending June 30, 1900), 431-2, and pl. 2, figs. 3 and 4.

⁴⁷ Canon F. W. Galpin, The Music of the Sumerians (Cambridge, 1937).

⁴⁸ Neolithic B is not considered here, as it may have been merely a local reaction on the part of our mesolithic aborigines, as Mr Stuart Piggott has suggested.

⁴⁹ The Personality of Britain (3rd edn., Cardiff, 1938), p. 40, and pls. II, V, VI, and VII.

⁵⁰ This refers to the linguistic division of the Celtic-speaking peoples into p and q branches, the former comprising at the present day the Welsh, Cornish and Breton stocks, and the latter the Gaelic-speaking Irish and Scottish. Where the former group uses a p, as in map (=son), the latter tends to use a q or c, as in mac (=son). Similar p and q variations existed between Greek and Latin, and between the dialects of ancient Italy (Latin and Osean) and Greece (Attic and Ionic) ; also between Zend and Sanskrit.

⁵¹ The support given to this view by Irish tradition is worth consideration.

⁵² Eoin MacNeill, ‘The Pretanic Background in Britain and Ireland’, Journ. R. Soc. Ant. Ireland, LXIII, 1-28.

⁵³ J. Fraser, ‘The Question of the Picts’, Scottish Gaelic Studies, II, pt. II (1928), 172-201.

⁵⁴ ‘The Gaelic vocabulary, both in Ireland and in Scotland, contains a very large pre-Celtic element’.—J. Fraser, op. cit., 185.

⁵⁵ The Celtic instrument may have been the bow-shaped harp (Gk. vάβλα, Heb. nebel), or the crot or cruit (Gk. κιθάρα), a form of lyre. The triangular form of harp popularly associated with the Welsh and Irish is of northeast European origin, and was introduced to the British Isles by the Vikings ; see F. W. Galpin, A Textbook of European Musical Instruments (1937), 79, 83.

⁵⁶ It is significant that among the city-dwelling descendants of Cain, the first cultivator of the ground, are not only the first metal worker, Tubal-Cain, but also Jubal, ‘the father of all such as handle the harp and pipe’ (GENESIS, IV, 21, 22, Rev. Vers.)

⁵⁷ It may also be significant that according to Irish tradition the Milesians, who seem to correspond with the first Celtic immigrants to Ireland, are said to have been accompanied by a harper (W. H. Gratton Flood, The Story of the Harp, London, 1905). A detail like this, when given in connexion with a semi-mythical event is likely to have a deeper significance—e.g. the introduction of the harp—than when given in connexion with a purely historical event, such as an expedition of Edward 1 against the Scots.