cherished duties of those graceful women--the Greek Muses--was to sing songs at the banquets of the immortals, and the principal occupation of the Sirens, who sat upon rocks, was to sing ditties to the passing mariners. The record of woman’s singing is certainly ahead of man’s, and it is regrettable that in these days she does not continue to be ahead of him. It should be woman’s prerogative to sing, while men could monopolise the more technical branches of music, such as composing, and playing the flute and string and brass monsters. Go to one of the fashionable concerts devoted to that poor pale thing, “The Modern Ballad,” and see if the incongruity presented by six feet of muscular manhood warbling about stars kissing, and moons flirting, does not jar your sense of the fitness of things. Listen to the same sentiments voiced by a woman, however, and you will find the incongruity vanishes, and mere trash becomes sentiment.[32] Unfortunately every woman is not blessed with a melodious singing voice, yet the instinct to sing being in her, she has turned to the best imitation of the human voice she can find--_i.e._ the violin and the violoncello. To-day these instruments, and even the viola, count innumerable votaries, both professional and amateur, among the fair sex, but who was the first brave lady to “saw the catgut with the horse’s tail” history does not recount. Where history fails however myth steps in and supplies us with the information that the invention of producing musical sounds from a stretched string originated in the twang of Diana’s hunting bow. Then the beautiful poetess Sappho--whose name has been handed down to us much besmirched for the reason that she was in advance of her time--is assigned the honour of inventing the fiddle-bow mounted with horse hair. St Cecilia--whose name now graces numberless Musical Societies--is said to have united instrumental with vocal music in divine worship, about the year 230. Little is known accurately of this saint, but legendary lore pronounces her to have been a noble Roman lady who embraced Christianity, and was forced by her parents into a union with a pagan named Valerian. She eventually converted both her husband and his brother to her faith, and they all three suffered martyrdom for their convictions. The passing phase in her history which relates that she frequently united instrumental music with that of her voice in praising the Lord, has inspired artists to paint and mould her in an attitude of praise with the organ and other musical instruments by her side. Whether she played the viola da gamba, or indeed any instrument, is a fact now lost in oblivion; in any case Domenichino has exquisitely represented her in the act of drawing the bow across a handsome bass-viol in his immortal picture now in the Louvre Collection in Paris. After St Cecilia a prominent English lady, who was the daughter of “Old King Cole” of fiddling fame, was a skilled musician according to Geoffrey of Monmouth.