Myth and Science / An Essay

by Tito Vignoli

The rhythm which stimulated primitive men to speak in song, also impelled them to accompany it with gestures and movements of the body, and this was the origin of the dance, which, when the body moved in correspondence with cadenced utterances, was at first merely the accompaniment of song. Tradition, modern ethnography, and the primitive habits of children bear witness to this fact. In addition to the rhythmic motion of all parts of the body, there is the practice of spontaneously beating time with the hands and feet, which were doubtless the first instruments used by man as a musical accompaniment. Hence, owing to the facility of, construction, there arose percussion instruments, which were at first made of stone or pieces of wood. So that singing, dancing, accompaniment with the limbs or with some rudely fashioned object arose almost simultaneously, as soon as the process of specification had established a distinction between song and ordinary speech. The first simple instruments which we have described only made the song, shout, war-dance, or religious ceremony more effective.

When chanted speech was formulated in a fixed order by means of rhythm and the modulations of the voice, it became verse, and the melody itself, as the simple expression of the song which had been cast into verse, or even into an inarticulate chant, was naturally evolved from it. An artistic education is not needed in order to experience the pleasure of rhythmic order in the succession of sound, for a predisposition of the nervous system will suffice. Savages, children, and even animals are sensible of rhythm, which is the order and symmetry of sensations. The dance, as Beauquier justly observes, is the practical form of rhythmic motion and the gesture of music. The motion impressed by sound on the internal organism tends to manifest itself in external gesture, and in fact, the rhythm of the music is repeated in dancing in the limbs and in the whole body of the dancer. The rhythm, regarded in its material cause, need not be accompanied by any very musical sound. The percussion instruments were at first only used to mark and intensify the rhythm.

Melody may be termed a fusion of rhythm and sounds of different pitches, united in time, and assuming a regular and symmetrical form; melody, as others also have observed, constitutes the whole of music, since without it harmony itself is vague and indefinite. Notwithstanding the numerous elements which may be discerned in melody, and the labour implied in its analysis, it is the facile and spontaneous creation of man, at any rate in its simplest expression; uneducated people, ignorant of music, are able to invent very tolerable melodies, of which we have instances in popular and national songs, which are generated by the musical fancy of those unconscious of the laws of music. Melody has an independent existence, while harmony serves to accentuate its form, and conduces to its subsequent progress among peoples capable of developing it in all its power.[37]

Music has a powerful influence upon all the senses. It has at all times been supposed to have a healing power, and in the Middle Ages it was believed to cure epilepsy, madness, convulsions, hysteria, and all forms of nervous affections; while in our own time it is usefully employed in cerebral diseases, since it has both a stimulating and soothing effect. Women, since they are generally more nervous and sensitive than men, are more especially affected by music. Animals as well as man are influenced by it, as it has been shown by exact and numerous experiments. Every one knows that many birds can be taught airs, which they sing with taste and lively satisfaction. The major key, with its regular proportions, its full and gradual sounds, arouses in man a sense of life and joy, while the minor key excites languor and invincible sadness, and animals are affected in the same way.

It is evident that the formation of the scale, the essential foundation of music, varies with, the epoch, climate, habits, and physiological conditions of the different races which have successively adopted the diatonic, the major, and minor scales. The music of the Chinese differs from our own, and while it is equally elaborate, it does not quite please us, and the same may be said of the music of the Indians, of the ancient Egyptians, and others. Undoubtedly our scale is more convenient and conformable to art, setting aside the physiological conditions of race, since the notes separated by regular intervals form a more spiritual and independent, in short a more artistic system.

Such are briefly the characteristics of the genesis of song and of music, the actual conditions which make them possible, and their effect on man and animals. We must now consider the subject from the mythical point of view, as we have done in the case of the other arts. We know that the image and emotions are mythically personified by us, and this fanciful reality is afterwards infused into the words used in its expression. It follows from this that speech is not only spontaneously and unconsciously personified as the material covering of the idea or emotion enclosed in it, but that the same thing occurs in language as a whole, at first vaguely, but afterwards in a definite and reflective manner, in consequence of intellectual development. Among all civilized peoples, whether extinct or still in existence, speech is not only personified in the complex idea or language, but it is deified. It is well known that this is the case in all phases of Eastern Christianity, and that the other Christian churches have since identified the Græco-Eastern idea of the Logos with the Messianic ideas engrafted upon it. If among the prehistoric peoples which most resemble modern savages, speech was personified by the necessity of the perceptive faculty, a vague power was certainly ascribed to it, and even a simple murmur or whisper was supposed to have a direct and personal influence on things, men, and animals. Magic, which is the primitive expression of fetishtic power, embodied in a man, had its most efficacious form in the utterance of words, cries, whispers, or songs, referring to the malign or to the healing and beneficent arts, and it was employed to arouse or to calm storms, to destroy or improve the harvest, or for like purposes.

Beginning with the traditions of our race, even prior to its dispersion, there are plain proofs that words and songs were originally employed for exorcisms and magic in various diseases, and for incantations directed against men or things. Kar means to bewitch, as in German we have einem etwas anthun, in low Latin facturare, in Italian fattucchiere, and from Kar we have carmen, a song or magic formula. The goddess Carmenta, who was supposed to watch over childbirth, derived her name from carmen, the magic formula which was used to aid the delivery. The name was also used for a prophetess, as Carmenta, the mother of Evander. Servio tells us that the augurs were termed carmentes.[38] The Sanscrit mâya, meaning magic or illusion and, in the Veda, wisdom, is derived from man, to think or know; from man we have mantra, magic formula or incantation; in Zend, manthra is an incantation against disease, and hence we have the Erse manadh, incantation or juggling, and mòniti in Lithuanian. The linguistic researches of Pictet, Pott, Benfey, Kuhn, and others show that in primitive times singing, poetry, hymns, the celebration of rites, and the relation of tales, were identical ideas, expressed in identical forms, and even the name for a nightingale had the same derivation. So also the names of a singer, poet, a wise man, and a magician, came from the same root.

Among all historic and savage peoples it was the general practice to use exorcism by means of magic formulas and incantations, combined with the noise of rude instruments; this was part of the pathology, meteorology, and demonology which dated from the beginning of speech, and the first rude ideas of fetishes and spirits have persisted in various forms down to our days. We have a plain proof of this in a work dedicated to Pius IX. by M. Gaume, in which he sets forth the virtue of holy water against the innumerable powers of evil which, as he declares, still people the cosmic spaces, and similar rites may be traced in the liturgies of all modern religions. This belief is directly founded on the fanciful personification and incarnation of a power in speech itself, in song, and in sound. David had similar ideas of dancing and its accessories, and the walls of Jericho are said to have fallen at the sound of the trumpets, as if these contained the spirit of God. The Patagonians, to quote a single instance from among savages, drive away the evil spirits of diseases with magic songs, accompanied by drums on which demons are painted. To these mythical ideas we must refer the worship of trees, which involves that of birds, so far as they whistle and sing.

The worship of trees and groves is universal: peculiar trees, groves, and woods are worshipped in Tahiti, in the Fiji Islands, and throughout Polynesia; in barbarous Asia, in Europe, America, and the whole of Africa. Cameron, Schweinfurth, Stanley, and other modern travellers in Africa give many instances of this. Schweinfurth describes such a worship among the Niam-Niam, who hold that the forest is inhabited by invisible beings. This worship is naturally combined with that of birds, which become the confidants of the forest, repeat the mysteries of mother earth, and sometimes become interpreters and prophets to man.

Birds, by their power of moving through the air as lords of the aerial space, by their arts of building, by the beauty of their plumage, their secret haunts in the forests and rocks, by their frequent appearance both by day and night, and by the variety of their songs, must necessarily have excited the fetishtic fancy of primitive men. The worship of birds was therefore universal, in connection with that of trees, meteors, and waters. They were supposed to cause storms; and the eagle, the falcon, the magpie, and some other birds brought the celestial fire on the earth. The worship of birds is also common in America, and in Central America the bird voc is the messenger of Hurakau, the god of storms. The magic-doctors of the Cri, of the Arikari, and of the Indians of the Antilles, wore the feathers and images of the owl as an emblem of the divine inspiration by which they were animated. Similar beliefs are common in Africa and Polynesia.[39] It is well known that the Egyptians worshipped the ibis, the hawk, and other birds, and that the Greeks worshipped birds and trees at Dodona, in consequence of a celebrated oracle. In Italy the lapwing and the magpie became Pilumnus and Picus, who led the Sabines into Picenus. Divination by eagles and other birds was practised at Rome, and German, Slav, and Celtic traditions abound in similar myths.[40] Nor are they wanting in the Bible itself, in which we hear of the trees of knowledge and of life, of some celebrated trees in the times of the patriarchs, of the raven and the dove sent out as messengers. The Old Testament speaks of the worship of groves at Ashtaroth in Canaan, of sacrifices under the green trees, and we know that such worship occurred in the Semitic races of Numidia and elsewhere.