LONDON STREET MUSICIANS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVI, Issue 12587, 23 August 1901, Page 2

LONDON STREET MUSICIANS.

(Btw Ywl: Sim.l A street piano which wakes you out of your afternoon nap at three or thereabouts with a brisk waltz, polka or two step, stopping short in the middle of the tune and finishing it half a block away, constitutes tho sum and substance of street music in New York, but in London it is different. There a variety of musicians in costumes, more or less erratic, occupy the streets in'termittently from early morning till dust and after.

Breakfast over, at about the', time ten maids in caps and aprons are upon their knees violently scrubbing ten consecutive door-steps, across the way, a man comes along and stops in front of your window, props himself comfortably against the iron railing, arranges his barrel organ, which is about the size of a hat box, in such a position that its entire weight shall rest on the railing and none on himself, and Zets loose the monkey. The monkey perambulates up and down the railing, looking quizzically and expectantly in at you, while the man with the exception of the revolving hand stands immovable as a Buddhist until the cook, rising from subterranean depths gets after him with a poker, whereupon, shouldering the barrel organ, he flees, the monkey leaping after him. Then comes the woman with the baby. She is an early riser, this woman, almost as'early a riser as the Italian. She walks straight down the street, .rain or shine, with the baby in her arms. At first she carried a wooden child or a rag do,l-; but the police becoming wary, she was forced to bring out a live baby or to her lair. However, it is never her own child, but a borrowed or rented one. No mother with a heart in her bosom would carry heT own child about the streets and sing to it such songs as she sings and in such a voice. At the first few notes blinds are quickly drawn, doors are barricaded, and the inhabitants retire to the rear. Presently a window here and there is thrown open and pennies are flung therefrom in the frantic effort to stop the penetration of the sound; but serenely picking them up, the woman goes singing blithely en and on till SOME INDIVIDUAL' BUNS FOR THE TOLICE.

After her comes the man with the flute. Shifting undecidedly from one foot to the other, fixing a furtive eye upon the windows, he starts his little tune. It is never familiar. Perhaps it would be if it resembled in the slightest degree the tune he (started out to play, which it doesn t. It is of so strange and weird a quality m fact that the cook soon sends the hallboy out to shoo him away. When that feat is accomplished then arrives the morning street piano, which is as different from the evening street piano as night is different from day. The evening piano'is a jaunty thing, to whose music dance nimblo-footed singers, girls in blue and boys in blouses, knee breeches and buckled shoes, accompanied by fleet youths who catch stray pennies m tall silk hats. The morning piano is disreputable to a degree, its cover ragged and worn bb the trousers of the urchin who shoves it forlornly about. A whining baby reclines in the push cart, and an old woman wrapped in a shawl that has ones boasted of colour, ambles limpingly in the rear.

Like the Italian the boy iauls the piano directly opposite your door, slowly turns the crank and ihs thing begins to wail, to wheeze, to groan, struck with the rheumatism of London fogs and rains and cold stormy weather together with a general

debilitation caAised more or less by age. No waltzes, polkas or two-Steps issue from the rustiness of its slack strings. No schottisches. No minuets. But tunes distressingly feeble, with a note dropped here and there like a. lost tooth: and the t'svasng of broken strings accompanied by the creak of the merciless crank as it turns and turns and turns until with one mad impulse a mob rushes forth from yawning doors and

CHASES TltE OUTFIT AWAY. SileUcfe then for a while; but not for long. It is drifting toward the afternoon and time for the bagpipes. Presently they c6me, three tall Scotchmen, but fortunately only one with bagpipes. They are fine specimens of men; but on a cold day it seems a soft of pity about their knees, and the blueness of them. One is accustomed to see blue hands and faces, but not, unless one- is in Scotland, knees. Still, in spite of this iteming disadvantage, they march heroically along in the middle of the street and stop before ybu. There are always two large men and a small man. The small man invariably carries the bagpipes. When he is planted like a mechanical doll or a "nickel-in theslot machine in a convenient spot the biggest of the tall men starts him. At the same time the hearing is cleft with an earSplitting sour.d which goes this: "Urn, urn, um, um, urn, u-m> um." Nobody tries to keep up with the tune. All you hear is the- "Um, um, um, um, um, um, um." But you liear. that till the air enveloping you resounds with what seems the buzzing of giant bees, or the whirring of massive machinery; Until at last the universe itself resolves into a bewildering, never-ending "Um, um, um, um, um, um, um."

To the ■accompaniment of the humming his companions march up and down, up and down, striding majestically after the splendid fashion of Highland chieftains, their short skirts twitching about their cold bare knees.

By the time things have come to a crisis and brain-r.acked victims are congregated together considering the advisability of drenching the bagpipes with buckets of water judiciously thrown, the tallest of the chiefs suddenly and unexpectedly presses the button and- stops the hum, the astonished silence reeks with its echo for & brief period of time, the three STALK GRANDLY AWAY, AND YOU HAVE YOUR TKA. Between tea time and dinner there are intermittent concerts upon the fife and the accordion, which sobs out strange, uncertain and -unfamiliar airs, then sobs itself still. Later, from a distant street comes the high sweet voice of a girl with the twang of a harp as accompaniment. Later still, comes the piano en giant wheels, the pianist in evening dress, the singers standing in rows, -very elegant, very swell. Bub at dinner arrives the climax of the Tuesday and Friday band. ' Somewhere in your inner consciousness you realise that you have heard this band in the intervals of organ, flute, fife, street piano and bagpipe the life-lcng day, for whether, the suh ■shines or it rains or bails, or snows, it plays in the immediate neighbourhood from sunrise to sundown; now near, now far away. It wouldn't mattes so much if they played things you knew, or even if they ■played a few things that they knew; but as "it is, the discord racks the nerves, it fills the dining-room with vibrations of such, strength as to preclude all attempts at conversation, it disturbs the flowers in long rows down the centre of the table, it produces such consternation, in. fact, that hands are thrust into pockets, a contribution is hastily collected, the husn money is despatched and the discord is thus got lid of.