The moment that
the cultivated stranger comes among them with his philological and
sociological explanations, their pretty significance seems to me to be
gone. I do not care a brass farthing what they are all about; they are
old, they are legendary; as performed by people who have grown up among
them, and seen them practised from childhood as a matter of course,
they have a certain grace of congruity about them, as the schoolmen
say. But printed gravely in a book they seem to me to be nothing but
barbarous and foolish games of childish import.
Another year he found some Finnish legends when he was on a yachting
cruise, which he translated into an ungainly English. The tales are
utterly worthless, not a spark of romance from beginning to end, only
typical of an age which I humbly thank God we have left behind.
This year he is full of Balearic music; he played me a number of dreary
and monotonous tunes, which he said were so characteristic. But if they
were characteristic, and I have no reason to doubt his word, they only
seem to me to prove that those islanders are destitute of musical taste
and instinct to a quite singular degree.
While I was up in town, my friends certainly did their best to amuse
me; they had agreeable people of a literary type to luncheon, tea, and
dinner. We heard some music, we went to a play or two, we went to look
at some pictures.
Pages:
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271