Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/84

Rh 70 L U T L U T impurity arose in various ways ; among the Greeks, besides the general idea that man is always in need of purification, the species of guilt most insisted on by religion are incurred by murder, by touching a dead body, by sexual intercourse, and by seeing a prodigy or sign of the divine will. The last three of these spring from the idea that man had been without preparation and in an improper manner brought into communication with God, and was therefore guilty. The first, which involves a really moral idea of, guilt, is far more important than the others in Hellenic religion. Among the Romans we hear more of the last species of impurity ; in general the idea takes the form that after some great disaster the people become convinced that some guilt has been incurred somewhere and must be expiated. The methods of purification consist in ceremonies performed with water, fire, air, or earth, or with a branch of a sacred tree, especially of the laurel, and also in sacrifice and other ceremonial. Before entering a temple the worshipper dipped his hand in the vase of holy water (Trepippavrripiov, aqua lustralis) which stood at the door ; before a sacrifice bathing was a common kind of purification ; salt-water was more efficacious than fresh, and the celebrants of the Eleusinian mysteries bathed in the sea (uAaSe //.varai) ; the water was more efficacious if a firebrand from the altar were plunged in it. The torch, fire, and sulphur (TO Oelov) were also powerful purifying agents. Purification by air was most frequent in the Dionysiac mysteries ; puppets suspended and swinging in the air (oscilla) formed one way of using the lustrative power of the air. Rubbing with sand and salt was another excellent method. The sacrifice chiefly used for purification by the Greeks was a pig ; among the Romans it was always, except in the Lupercalia, a pig, a sheep, and a bull (suovetaurilia). In Athens a purificatory sacrifice and prayer was held before every public meeting ; the Maimacteria in honour of Zeus Meilichios was an annual festival of purification, and several other feasts had the same character. On extraordinary occasions lustrations were performed for a whole city. So Athens was purified by Epimenides after the Cylonian massacre, and Delos in the Peloponnesian War. In Rome, besides such annual ceremonies as the Ambarvalia, Lupercalia^ Cerealia, Payanalia, Arc., there was a lustration of the fleet before it sailed, and of the army before it marched. Part of the ceremonial always consisted in leading or carrying the victims round the impure persons or things. After any disaster the lustratio dassium or jexercitus was often again performed, so as to make certain that the gods got all their due. The Amburbium was a similar ceremonial performed for the whole city on occasions of great danger or calamity. Ambilustrium, was the purificatory ceremony, consisting in sacrifice and prayer, performed after the regular quin quennial census of the Roman people. LUTE. The European lute is derived in form and name from the Arabic &quot; el c ud,&quot; &quot; the wood,&quot; the consonant of the article &quot; el &quot; having been retained in the European languages for the initial of the name (French, luth; Ital., liuto; Span., laud; German, Laute ; Dutch, luit). The Arab instrument, with convex sound-body, pointing to the resonance board or membrane having been originally placed upon a gourd, was strung with silk and played with a plectrum of shell or quill. It was adopted by the Arabs from Persia, the typical instrument being the two-stringed &quot; tanbur,&quot; and ultimately found its way to the West at the time of the crusades. The modern Egyptian &quot; c ud&quot; is the direct descendant of the Arabic lute, and, according to Lane, is strung with seven pairs of catgut strings played by a plectrum. A specimen at South Kensington, given by the Khedive, has four pairs only, which appears to have been the old stringing of the instrument. When frets are j employed they are of catgut disposed according to the Arabic scale of seventeen intervals in the octave, consist ing of twelve limmas, an interval rather less than our equal semitone, and five commas, which are very small but quite recognizable differences of pitch. The lute family is separated from the guitars, also of Eastern origin, by the formation of the sound body, which is in all lutes pear-shaped, without the sides or ribs neces sary to the structure of the flat-backed guitar and cither. Observing this distinction, we include with the lute the little Neapolitan mandoline of 2 feet long, and the large double- necked Roman chitarrone, which not unfrequently attains to a length of 6 feet. Mandolines are partly strung with wire, and are played with a plectrum, indispensable for metal or short strings. Perhaps the earliest lutes were so played, but the large lutes and theorbos strung with catgut have been invariably touched by the fingers only, the length permitting this more sympathetic means of producing the tone. The Neapolitan is the best known mandoline ; it was indicated by Mozart in the score of Don Giovanni, to accompany the famous serenade. The four pairs of strings are tuned like the violin, in fifths : p=p q lE^^fE: EEhE3 The Milanese is larger, and has five and six pairs : -- ! --I --- 9 -.0 --- ._ --EE *- * ^=t t~ - or, as in a specimen at South Kensington, The mandola or mandore is larger than either, with eight pairs of strings. This name has been derived from the Italian word, similarly spelled but differently accented, signifying almond, which the mandola is supposed to resemble in shape, but ban, man, pan, and tan are first syllables of lute and guitar instruments met with all over the world, the oldest form of which is the borrowed Greek &quot; TravBovpa&quot; an Asiatic word, which the Arabs changed to &quot; tanbur.&quot; Pra3torius (Organographia, Wolfenbiittel, 1619, a scarce work, of which the only copy in Great Britain is in the Advocates Library, Edinburgh), writing when the lute was in universal favour, mentions seven varieties distinguished by size and tuning. The smallest would be larger than a mandoline, and the melody string, the &quot;chan terelle,&quot; often a single string, lower in pitch. Prsetorius calls this an octave lute, with the chanterelle C or D. The two discant lutes have respectively B and A, the alto G, the tenor E, the bass D, and the great octave bass G, an octave below the alto lute which may be taken as the model lute cultivated by the amateurs of the time. The bass lutes were most likely theorbos, that is, double-necked lutes, as described below. The accordance of an alto lute was _^ _^ -O- _ [ . I J -er^ h~ I I | q founded upon that of the original eight-stringed European lute, to which the highest and lowest notes had, in course rryr of time, been added. A later addition was the p 2 - | |- _^ also on the finger-board, and bass strings, double or single,