The Korean, prisoned during the winter in his small, dark, dirty, and malodorous rooms, with neither a glowing fireside nor brilliant lamp to mitigate the gloom, welcomes spring with lively excitement, and demands music and song as its natural accompaniment—song that shall express the emancipation, breathing space, and unalloyed physical pleasure which have no counterpart in our English feelings. Thus a classical song runs:—
The willow catkin bears the vernal blush of summer’s dawn
When winter’s night is done;
The oriole, who preens herself aloft on swaying bough,
Is summer’s harbinger;
The butterfly, with noiseless ful-ful of her pulsing wing,
Marks off the summer hour.
Quick, boy, thy zither! Do its strings accord? ’Tis well.
Strike up! I must have song.
The second style of Korean vocal music is the Ha Ch’i or popular. The most conspicuous song in this class is the A-ra-rüng, of 782 verses. It is said that the A-ra-rüng holds to the Korean in music the same place that rice does in his food—all else being a mere appendage. The tune, but with the trills and quavers, of which there are one or two to each note, left out, is given here, though Mr. Hulbert, to whom I am greatly indebted, calls it “a very weak attempt to score it.”