126 DR TRAILL ON A PERUVIAN MUSICAL INSTRUMENT 
be termed the ordinary compass of eight notes, produced by moderate and easy 
blowing, and producing clear tones. 
The Peruvian instrument has a contrivance for giving variety to its notes, 
which appears to me very ingenious, and which, as far as I can learn, is peculiar 
to it. Four of its pipes, viz., Nos. 2, 4, 6, and 7, have each a ventilage, or 
small hole perforating its front, about an inch below its top, which must be 
covered with the fingers of the performer when these pipes are to be sounded. 
These holes are so near the top of the pipes, that, when open, the sound of the 
note is quite lost; so that if the performer does not mean to sound that particular 
note in a rapid movement, it is not necessary to avoid blowing into the pipe, but 
merely to uncover the ventilage, which effectually destroys its sound. From the 
peculiar adjustment of the instrument, an harmonious and pleasing ¢e/rachord is 
produced by running up the scale with all the ventilages open. 
This description renders it evident that the Peruvian has considerable advan- 
tages over the simple Grecian syrinx, which is generally represented in sculpture 
with seven pipes, and occasionally with only sz. In other respects, the Grecian 
instrument appears to differ little from the modern organetto; but it is, in some 
of its modifications, of very high antiquity, and perhaps preceded the invention 
of the single flute (v««A0;) with numerous ventilages. 
Lucretius describes Pan’s mode of playing to be the same as we now find it 
among the Italians: 
* Unco spe labro calamos pereurrit hianteis 
Fistula sylvestrem ne cesset fundere Musam.”’ 
Lib. iv., 592. 
The ancients ascribed the invention of the syrinx to the disappointed love of 
the god Pan, amid the hills of his favourite Arcadia. 
“ Pan primus calamos cera conjungere plures 
Instituit.”’ Viren, Eel, IT. 
Both Pan and the pipe, however, had probably an Egyptian origin, long before 
the groves of Greece were haunted by any deity; and, if I am not mistaken, we 
may trace the syrinx to an antediluvian patriarch. Jubal, the descendant of Carn, 
is in Genesis called “the father of all such as handle the harp and organ.” 
The English translators of the Bible have adopted the interpretation of the 
Latin Vulgate, in which the Hebrew bay, Yogel,* is rendered organum,— ipse 
fuit pater canentium cithera et organo.” This passage, in the Septuagint, and 
in the famous Alexandrian MS., runs thus: éurog jy 6 ndladeicas parrngioy xl x1Bcgov— 
“He it was who taught the psaltery and the harp.” + 
* Or, with points, as in Wazron’s Polyglott, :sarap:3. 
+ The Hebrew name is derived from the verb bay, which, in the Septuagint, is always rendered 
by éaizidqus, I join together ; which would seem to indicate that it consisted of reeds or pipes put 
together. 

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