THE PASSING OF SONG.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 278, 25 May 1917, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE PASSING OF SONG.

(From tho Indianapolis News.)

S'inging, as far as most people are concerned! is a lost art. Thousand* attend operas, recitals .and musical comedies, tens of thousands wind up phonographs ; hut as for singing themselves, informally, at tlioir work or play they have forgotten how. In times past people of all ranks sang together as a matter of course. Sailors sang at their wcrk, peasants, shepherds, cow hoys, all had their favourite and .appropriate R )U"s. The siongs of children at games, thelidlahies of mothers are in the collected ballads and folklore of many ' "The pastimes and tiie labours of the husbandman and the shepherd, says Andrew Lang, ''were long ago a kind of natural opera. Each task had its own son": plowing, seeding, harvest burial -aft had their appropriate ballads 01 dirges The whole s'oul of the peasant claw iireatl.es in their burdens as the great sea. resounds in the snells cast up on the shore. , Xowadavs the whirl «>' inach'nor\ makes all'the noise. The workers in m iH s might find it .msntisfyii.K to sing , L their work but it is doubtful li th<> would siug even if their voices cou.d |., heard fwhile singing m an ofhco o «it,ro would pretty surely he stopped l,v the " boss" or the police. housands r ato every nignt in the silenro of lt „.vi„g pi'ture theatre,: and e tl.o churches where singing '•>' th«. cougreuat'oii used U, be ciwtn.narv the at'.endani« now usually li-U-.i in s.lenfe to :■ naid singer. . , S"'!i"-ii!" ill thW age is largely ( oiifinr.l (~'ihe pn.fesvonal drunk. ,i ,1,1 n Mild f/ramop'ionei.