SON 



SON 



• SONERGONG. See Sunergong. 



SONEWALDT, a town of Lufatia ; 8 miles S. of 

 Luckau. 



SONEY, a town of Hindooftan, in Malwa ; 9 miles E. 

 of Saiirungpour. 



SONG, a town of Africa, in Bambarra, on the Niger. 

 N. lat. 1 3° 54'. W. long. 3=55'. 



Song, a town of China, of the third rank, in Ho-nan ; 

 37 miles S.S.W. of Ho-nan. 



So.N'G Song, a Imall ifland in the Indian fea, near the 

 coaft of Africa. S. lat. 8° 1 2'. 



SONG, in Poetry, a little compolltion, conlilUng of 

 fimple, eafy, natural verfes, fet to a tune, in order to be 

 fung. 



Each llanza of a fong is called a couplet. 



The fong bears a great deal of refemblance to the madri- 

 gal, and more to the ode ; which is, indeed, nothing but a 

 fong, according to the ancient rules. 



Its objeft is ufually either wine or love, whence M. le 

 Brun defines a modern fong, to be either a foft and amorous, 

 or a brillc and Bacchic thought exprelled in few words. 



Indeed, this is to reltrain it to too narrow bounds ; for 

 we have devout fongs, fatyrical fijngs, and panegyrical 

 fongs. But, be the long what it will, the verfes are to be 

 eafy, natural, and flowing ; and are to contain a certain 

 harmony, vvliicii neither fliocks the reafon nor the ear ; and 

 which unites poetry and mufic agreeably together. 



Anciently, tiie only way of preferving the memory of 

 great and noble aftions, was by recording them in fongs ; 

 and, in America, there are Hill people who keep their whole 

 hiftory in fongs. 



Songs have at all time?, and in all pLices, afforded amufe- 

 ment and confolation to mankind: every pailion of the humau 

 bread has been vented in fong ; and the molt favage as well 

 as civilized inhabitants of the earth have encouraged thefe 

 cffufions. The natives of New Zealand, who feem to live 

 as nearly in a (late of nature as any animals tiiat are merely 

 gregarious, have their fongs, and their tmprovifntori ; and 

 the ancient Greeks, during every period of tiieir hiitory and 

 refinement, had lhe\rJco!ia for almoll every circumllance and 

 occafion incident to fociety. 



Singing was fo common among the ancient Romans as 

 to become proverbial. Phxdria, in the Phormio of Te- 

 rence, begs Dorio to hear him, he iias but one word to offer ; 

 when Dorio tells him he is always fiiiging the fame fong. 

 Horace fpeaks of the fame affectation among tiie fingers of 

 his time as prevails with the prefent ; never to iing when 

 they are entreated, or to dcfift if no one wilhcs to hear them. 

 And fome idea of the cultivated itate of ir.ufic in Gaul, fo 

 early as the fifth century, may bo acquired from a pailage in 

 one of the epilUes of Sidonius Aptlhnarir, who, in his clia- 

 rafter of king Theodoric the Goth, fays, that " this prince 

 was more delighted with the fweet and foothing founds of a 

 iingle inllrument, wliich calmed his mind, and flattered his 

 car by its foftncfs, than with hydraulic organs, or the noife 

 and clangor of many voices and inllruments in concert." 



Clothaire II. in the ftventh century, having gained a 

 preat vidtory over the Saxons, it was celebrated by a Latin 

 long in riiyme, wiiich the annalills tell us was fung with 

 great vociferation all over the kingdom. 



As the origin of fongs and the formation of the language 

 of every country are fo nearly coeval, we hope the reader 

 xvill allow II': to bellow a few columns on a fubjeci which, 

 though it may not be tiiought abfolutely necellary for a 

 jnul'ical lexicographer, or even liifloriaii to trace, yet it lies 

 lo near his path, that he can hardly proceed on hie way with- 



out its being imprefled on his mind fortuitoufly. For the 

 /on^s of the ancient Greeks, fee ScOLlA. 



But in enquiring after the moil ancient fongs in modern 

 languages, we Ihall not enter upon the merits of a qnellion 

 which has been much agitated in France during the middle 

 of the lalt century, " Whether the prefent language of that 

 country was firll cultivated in the northern or foisthern pro- 

 vinces .'" The origin of all inventions, after having been 

 futtiiid by ignorance and idlenefs to fleep for many ages, is 

 k> difficult to afcertain, that if the inhabitants of the king- 

 doms which gave them birth, where information is moft 

 likely to be furnilhed, are unable to bring them to light, it 

 would be arrogance in a foreigner to attempt it. The 

 Frencli critics and antiquaries all agree that the capital was 

 the lalt place to cultivate the vulgar tongue, and to receive 

 the firll eilays of thofe who made it the vehicle of their 

 thoughts. Fontenclle fays the firlt fparks of poetry appeared 

 chiefly at the two extremities of the kingdom, in Provence 

 and Picardy. " The Provengaux," fays he, " warmed by a 

 more genial fun, ought to have had the fuptriority ; but the 

 inhabitants of Picardy are their inferiors in nothing." M.de 

 la Ravaliere gives the honour of priority to the writers of 

 Normandy ; and Fauchet and Pafquier, feparating the French 

 poetry from the Provenijal, challenge the admirers of the 

 Troubadours to produce verfes of their writing of equal 

 antiquity with the ipecimens of French poetry which they 

 have exhibited. However, the Provenijai bards have lately 

 had many able champions, among whom M. de Lacurne de 

 Sainte Palaye, and his faithful 'Iquire, M. Millot, have dif- 

 tinguiflied themfelves. And though it cannot be denied 

 but that fragments of fongs lubfiit in the French language 

 of higher antiquity than in the dialetl of Provence, yet, as we 

 have been able to find no melodies that have been fet to 

 a modern language more ancient than thofe that have been 

 preferved m tiie Vatican library to the fongs of the Trou- 

 badours, we fliall begin our enquiries concerning the origin 

 of vulgar dialetts m Europe, by endeavouring to trace the 

 firfl formation of the language of Provence. 



Every refined and polifhed nation has a vulgar language 

 in its remote ))rovinces, and even in its capital, among the 

 comnion people, in which there arc innumerable words and 

 phrafcs t!iat have never been admitted into books. This 

 mult doubtleis have been tiie cafe with the Romans ; and it 

 is the opniion of fome perfons of great eminence in literature, 

 among whom niav b' numbered tiie learned cardinal Bembo, 

 and the marquis Malfoi, that tiie ancient Romans had at all 

 times an oral vulgar language whicli wa: diflerent from that 

 of books ; and that this colloquial language, lefs grammati- 

 cal and elegant than that of the learned, was carried by the 

 Romans into all the provinces under their dominion. It is 

 therefore probable that tliis, and not the written language 

 of Italy, was the mother of the Provenijal, Sicilian, Ita- 

 lian, and Spanilh dialefts. 



But luppoling fuch a language as Cicero's was ever 

 fpoken, it could not be laid alide for another all at once ; and 

 when we are told of a particular period or century, during 

 which the I^atin tongue ccafed to be fpoken in France or 

 Italy, and the Provencal, French, or Italian begun ; cre- 

 dulity itfelf is llaggcied, and unable to reconcile it to pro- 

 bability. Every language is long fpoken before it is written ; 

 and though the firll poet of Italy or Provence, who com- 

 mitted his verfes to writing in the vulgar tongue, could be 

 named, no one would venture to tell us by whom it was 

 firll fpoken. 



Tiie learned Maflei is of opinion that there was a vulgat 

 language in Italy long before the irniptiuns of the Lombards, 



Goths, 



