Page:Polynesian Mythology by George Grey (polynesianmythol00greyuoft).djvu/354

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Appendix.

On the Native Songs of New Zealand

And a comparison of the intervals discernible in them with the intervals stated to have been performed by the Ancient Greeks in some of their divisions of the musical scale, called γένος ἐναϱμονικὸν, or by others ἁρμονίκ.

All nations, perhaps, without excepting any, have some method of expressing the more energetic emotions beyond mere speaking or acting; a sense of joy or pain, naturally calling forth ejaculations and vociferations exceeding in limit the tone of voice used in ordinary discourse. The cry of war, the encouraging to battle, the shout of victory, or the lament of the vanquished, the wailing over a deceased friend, grief at the departure of a lover, each in its turn has prompted or suggested some modification of sound beyond the ordinary range of mere tame every-day discourse; and this modification of voice we may call, in a wide sense, natural music.

But as the highest art is to conceal the art,[1] and to imitate nature, that mighty nation, the Greeks, with an art almost peculiarly their own, having observed these expressions of sentiment, thence deduced certain laws[2] of interval, by which, while they kept within the limits of

  1. ↑ Cicero.
  2. ↑ Cicero, Orat.
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