Swelled o’er the Atlantic wave,
And decked his early grave—
Who for his Country fought, who for his Country fell.”[4]
(To be continued.)
[THE GIRL’S OWN QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.]
The Examiners Report on the Third and Last Twenty-four Questions.
Our useful and interesting competition is now at an end, and we give here the answers to the third and last instalment of questions. In this final march few competitors have fallen out of the ranks, and it is gratifying to have to record that the quality of the papers has steadily improved in almost every case, as, indeed, was to be expected from the painstaking and enthusiasm displayed at the start. It only remains now to say a few words about the competition as a whole, and to intimate who are the prize-winners and certificate-holders, and for that our diligent girls will not have long to wait.
49. What epidemic in Italy in the sixteenth century was cured by means of music?
To illustrate the proverb that a bad beginning makes a good ending, many failed to answer. But it was by no means out-of-the-way information that this epidemic was what is known as tarantism, which prevailed in South Italy to an extraordinary extent during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, being at its height during the sixteenth century. It was a sort of hysteria, and the different forms taken by the disease were cured by means of different airs, to which the patients were forced to dance till they often dropped down with exhaustion. Bands of players used to go through the country to provide the medicinal music, the melodies they played being spoken of as tarantellas.