A TALE OF A HARP

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 17, 14 October 1933, Page 23

A TALE OF A HARP

HOW THE SEA GOT ITS MUSIC • Have you ever lain on a sunny afternoon on the beach by the sea and heard the soft, dreaming murmur of the waves, until you were half asleep, and your mind was full of all manner of strange and beautiful thoughts—just as though some magic spell had been laid on you? Well, long, long ago—so long ago that no books had been written, and we only know about it through the stories handed down by word of mouth —the early children of the world lay, just as we do, by the sea, and listened to its music, and it seemed strange and wonderful to them. Afterwards they began to think about it, and to try to, explain how it got there, but they knew nothing about the laws of sound, and so, as they always did, they made a story. Some of these stories from the early world are among the most beautiful of all stories, and this is the one they made about the music in the sea.

Once upon a time there lived a man who seemed to have keener ears than other mortals. He heard the music that the flowers make when they nod to one another in the garden. He heard the music that the wind makes when it rustles in the grass. He heard the music that the stars make when they come out to shine at night. There was no sound that he could not hear, and he found all the sounds of earth so sweet that it grieved him that other people could not hear them as he did, for his heart was as sweet as the sounds he heard, and he couldn’t bear to keep them to himself. For a long time he thought, and at last he made himself a harp, and on the harp he learned to play all the sounds that he heard. People from far and near came to hear him, and when they listened to him their minds were full of kind and beautiful thoughts. All quarrels were forgotten, and people who had said hard words to each .other before they came to listen went back and said gentle ones, so wherever the harper went peace went with him. The wind when it heard him stopped blowing, and the birds stopped singing,, and the wild beast of the forest lay down at his feet and forgot that they were savage. One day, as the harper wandered, he came to the seashore, It was a sunny day, and the waves rippled gently as they broke on the beach, and the harper sat down on a rock and listened to the music of the sea. He thought that he had never heard anything so beautiful, and after a time he took up his harp and played the music that he had heard.

Never in all his life had the harper played as he played that sunny afternoon. The waves stopped their rippling to hear him, and the fishes came to the edge of the water, and the immortals looked down from the sky to listen. When they had heard, they lifted him up, for they wanted his beautiful music and his unselfish heart in the home for the gods.

But his harp was left lying on the shore, and the waves took it down to the bottom of the sea. There .the iner* maidens found it, and when they discovered that the sounds it ipqde were so sweet they always played it night and day. When the sea'is rough and the wind is high, you cannot hear them, but on still and beautiful days the music comes up through the waves, and it seems as though the power of the old harper were in it. so beautiful it is. and so soothing and so kind.