Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/107

 Reviews. 97

The Natural History of the Musical Bow : a Chapter in THE Developmental History of Stringed Instruments OF Music. By Henry Balfour, M.A., Curator of the Pitt-Rivers Museum. Oxford : The Clarendon Press. 1899.

In this, the first part of a monograph on the development of those musical instruments which claim origin from the musical bow, we are indebted to Mr. Balfour for a most interesting anthro- pological study. Commencing with the folk-tradition in India and Japan, which accounts for the invention of the Pinaka and the Koto, he goes on to show how the development of the instru- ment proceeds in at least three well-defined stages — first, when the simple bow of the archer is temporarily converted into a musical instrument ; the second, when the bow is constructed for musical purposes alone ; the third, when a resonator is more or less permanently attached to it.

Next, with a great wealth of anthropological learning and re- search, illustrated throughout by a series of graphic sketches representing specimens in the Pitt-Rivers and other museums, and derived from accounts by travellers, he proceeds to define the range of this curious instrument. It is found in India, Japan, the great group of islands north of Australia, largely in South Africa and Madagascar, and in the American continent from Mexico through Brazil and as far south as Patagonia. The tale of Hermes and other legends suggest its use on Greek and Latin soil.

Mr. Balfour tentatively accepts the theory that India was the original centre of dispersion. It is true that in quite modern times it has been conveyed by negro slaves to the southern American States. But at present the evidence seems inadequate to establish with certainty that it was nowhere the result of inde- pendent invention. We know that the bow as a weapon is in use nearly all the world over, and it does not seem impossible that its adaptation to serve the purpose of a musical instrument may have been independently evolved. It would thus be unnecessary to point to India as the centre from which the invention was primarily derived.

Now that attention has been called to the matter, it may be hoped that our travellers and explorers will supply Mr. Balfour with a much larger series of examples, the comparison of which

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