POPULAR AIRS PLAYED BY PINS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 15, Issue 33, 26 April 1904, Page 7

POPULAR AIRS PLAYED BY PINS.

There is a very pretty fable which has it that the pins dropped every year are picked up by fairies, who hammer them out on elfin anvils into notes of music. There is some basis for this Action for pins have a musical quality if you know how to bring it out. A young man discovered this fact the other evening, when he heard a chorus of pins singing a popular air. They were so arranged that they looked for all the world like a line of music taken from a book.' They stood up on a pine board each at a different height. The spaces between them were also of different widths. In touching the pins it was | apparent that each of them was capable of producing but one sound. It I was then observed that the sounds followed each other in such a manner as to perform the popular air in a way that was wonderfully pleasing The young girl who had set up this amateur organ said it was easy enough for anyone to make who had an ear for music, “ All there is of it,” she said, " is to get the tune into yeur head, then drive a pin down in a board, and keep driving and trying it till it sounds like the first note in the tune. Then stick up another pin for the second note and so on. To raise a pin to a higher note you hammer it further down, and to lower it you' pull It up a little. " When you want to go slow you put the pins a good way apart ; and when you want to go fast, you plant them thicker.” The next day she set up a pin organ in circular form. She made one of those little whirligigs which spin round when they are held over a rer gister or by a stove-pipe, and then connected it by a string with a wheel. This wheel as it turned set an upright shaft in motion, and from this there projected a stick with a pin at! one end. This was arranged so that when it revolved the pin in the stick played upon the pins in the circle, and rattled off a popular air at a tremendous pace.