It must be far more subtle than the
vibrations of the Welsh harp, and even more subtle (if also more
nasal) than those of the violin.
'The reason why music has in all ages been called in to aid in
evoking the spirits, the reason why it is as potent now as ever it
was in aiding the spirits to manifest themselves, is simple enough:
the rhythmic vibrations of music set in active motion the magnetic
waves through whose means alone the two worlds, spiritual and
material, can hold communication. The quality and the value of these
vibrations depend mainly, no doubt, upon the magnetic power,
conscious or other, of the musician, but partly also upon the kind of
instrument used. The vibrations awakened by stringed instruments have
been long known to be more subtle than any others: instruments of the
violin kind are of course the most subtle of all. Doubtless this is
why among the Welsh hills the old saying used to be "The spirits
follow the crwth."'
'Which folly is the more besotted,' I said, as I read and re-read the
marginalia--'that of the scholar with his scientific nonsense about
vibrations, or that of the ignorant Gypsy with her living mullos
drawn through the air by music and love?'
But now my eyes fell upon a very different kind of marginal note
which ran thus:--
'The one important fact of the twentieth century will be the growth
and development of that great Renascence of Wonder which set in in
Europe at the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of
the nineteenth.
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