two or three hnè, trumpets or clarionets, with a broad bellshaped mouth, which is movable and ordinarily but loosely attached. The noise of these is always very prominent, and is not relished by people who do not care for the bagpipes. There is also a similar number of puloay, or pyuay, a rude kind of flute. The best puloayplayer is always the leader of the band. Then there are ya-gwin, big cymbals and than-lwin, little cymbals, and the patma, a long drum like the tom-tom of India and beaten with the hand in the same way. Finally there are the wah le' khoht, each formed of a length of bamboo, extending to five feet occasionally, and split down the centre. These castanets are always in the hands of the most recently joined, and therefore most zealous, members of the band, and are clapped together with an energy which usually makes them unduly prominent. The above instruments serve to constitute a full band. Besides these, however, there are several others, used by themselves, and learners-even those who are members of an orchestral band-usually avail themselves of the aid of a teacher to acquire accuracy and delicacy of touch, especially in the case of the harp. The soung consists of thirteen silken strings stretched on a boat-shaped wooden case, with a long, curved handle. The Burman boat, low at the bows, rises to a very considerable height at the stern, and is so like a harp frame that there is a stock story of a country peasant, for the first time in Mandalay, believing that the gilded royal boats in the moat were gigantic harps being seasoned for use in the palace. The sounding-board is formed of thick buffalo-hide, and the instrument is tuned by pushing the strings up or down the curved handle, and so tightening or loosening them. Only the young men play, and the accomplishment is not very common. The handle rests on the left arm and the right hand touches the strings, while the singer plays to his own accompaniment. A similar instrument is the mee-gyoung, "the crocodile," a sort of guitar with three strings, stretched over a hollow sounding-board, shaped like that uninviting saurian. It is somewhat too primitive, however, to be popular, except with sentimental people. Finally there is the pattala, or bamboo harmonicon, as some call it. This instrument has always evoked approval from even the most fastidious of foreigners, as a singular instance of sweetness of sound produced from most unpromising materials. It consists of a carved and painted box, long and narrow and with high rising ends. From each of the corners of these sides are suspended strings, which hang down in a parabolic curve over the low centre of the box, and to these strings are attached flat strips of bamboo, placed at close intervals. Their tone is regulated by the more or less complete thinning out of the centre of the under side, and little sticks are used to strike them with. The notes produced are surprisingly clear and melodious. Fiddles may often be heard played with greater or less skill, especially on the pagoda steps by blind and deformed beggars, but the instrument is not national, and is never, or but rarely, found where Europeans have not penetrated. The same may be said of the young Burmans who play in Rangoon on the concertina and the English fife and piccolo. It is flattering to national pride to notice with what accuracy and rapidity they pick up English airs. But except at funerals and other solemn occasions instrumental music is looked upon not so much as a means of enjoyment in itself as an accompaniment to the human voice, and mere orchestral concerts would never draw the crowds which a single good singer can always command. The recitative character of the music is always more evident in the singing than in the instruments, and each "prince" or "princess" has individual peculiarities in the way of trills and staccatos introduced into the legitimate air. As the young musician learns by hanging about the band, so a vocalist follows an acknowledged great singer about and imitates his style, or at any rate learns the tunes and the words. The latter are, however, very immaterial, for the language itself is so melodious. that it is easy to express the ideas in rhythm as you go on. Moung Thah Byaw, the great singer of the day, always makes his songs as he sings them, and this is so well known that whenever he appears, whether in a regular play or only to sing a few airs, there are always thirty or forty reporters sitting round to take down his words in their parabeik. This peculiarity of the Tha-binwoon has occasionally got him into trouble. A somewhat incomprehensible piece of palace etiquette renders it treasonable to sing a than-zan, a new song, before the king. Moung Thah Byaw has several times, whether through too great laziness to learn the words, or the force of habit, transgressed this rule, and has actually been ordered out to execution. But he sang to the htoung hmoo and the pah gwet, and these grim customers, unable to resist the melody of this latter-day Orpheus, have hid him away and exhibited some less talented person's body in evidence of having carried out their orders. Then when the next palace concert came on, the king-his late majesty would grow tired of the ordinary vocalists and regret that the great improvisatore was gone. Whereupon Moung Thah Byaw would promptly come forth and sing his sweetest. He has been killed in this way several times, and is now not above fifty years of age—a little older than the prima donna, Yeendaw Mah-lay. The honours he receives are quite on a par with European admiration of musical talent. He has a patent to carry a golden umbrella, and, as Tha-bin-woon, has magisterial powers to punish those who offend him or refuse to obey his edicts. Two lictors go before him to clear the way, a white cloth being tied round their fasces as a distinctive mark. When he performs in a play a low yaza mat, or royal fence, extends across the front of the stage, and at the ends are planted his golden htee and a banana-tree. The latter distinction is also granted to Moung Thah Zahn and Moung Moo, singers only inferior to the Tha-bin-woon himself. If the tunes are not easily reduced to regular rules, the difficulty with the metres is not less. There exist, indeed, written laws ordaining the number of feet to the verse, but they are as lightly regarded as is consistent with their recognition at all. Much more precision is indeed expected in the old tunes than in those of modern date, but even with them song-writers of the present time allow themselves very considerable freedom. The original linga are all very short. Thus the pyoh has but four syllables; ka-bya, four; yatoo, six and four; lootah, four; ya-gan, six and four; è-gyin, four, five, and six; hmawlohn, four and six; peik-zohn, four; lay-gyoh, four; sahgyin, four, five, and six, and so forth. In the thanzan, or new tunes, however, the compass of the lines often approaches the portentous length of some of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Such modern tunes are the kayah-than (so-called English), doh-bat-than, na-bay-than, nan-thehn yohdaya (Siamese), and pyee-gyee-than (Chinese). Such compositions as the lohn-gyin and ngoh-gyin cannot be designated otherwise than as musical prose, with occasional fits of metre, prompted by their dolorous character. They are usually the wails of despondent lovers and the laments. of divorcées, unhappily all too common (in plays and song books). Such, too, are the soung-ba-sah, the ardent epistles of separated sweethearts. The question of rhyme is even more puzzling. Some compositions not intended to be sung; such as notably the sè-hnit ya-thee bwè, songs about the twelve months of the year, giving an account of their characteristics, the pwès that take place in them, and so on, are written with regular final rhymes, while the other laws of prosody, shi'-lohn ta-beik, koh-lohn ta-beik, and so forth, are fairly strictly observed. But in the songs of the plays and suchlike productions, rhyme runs absolute riot, so that it is quite common for every word in a line to rhyme with the corresponding word in the second verse of the couplet. Thus in the kayah than, translated below, there are abundance of lines like the following: Or Or in the Taydat— Thoo-zah loh loh Ma yoh lay hnan kyouk Ta koh dè pa Ma soh bè hma Such rhymes occur in an abundance that makes them the most prominent characteristic of the verse, but it is impossible to reproduce them except in another monosyllabic language. English, of all English, of all others, offers the greatest difficulties to the translator. I have done my best to reproduce the following Kayahthan, "The Sound of the Trumpet," as nearly as possible in the varying metre of the original. Those who are best able to judge of the success of the attempt will be the most lenient in their criticism. I may mention that the tune |