God rest you merry, merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay, Remember Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas day, To save our souls from Satan’s pow’r that long had gone astray, Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, and joy, and joy, Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, and joy. ] In addition to modal tunes we have a certain number of folk-airs built upon a “gapped,” or limited, scale of five notes instead of the usual seven. This “pentatonic” scale, which appears to be very characteristic of the primitive music of all nations, was formerly held as an infallible sign of a Scottish origin, and the old recipe to produce a Scottish air was—“stick to the black keys of the piano.” It is quite true that a large number of Scottish melodies have the characteristics of the pentatonic scale, but so also have the Irish tunes, and there are a lesser number that may claim to be English. Much nonsense has been written to account for the existence of the pentatonic scale, the general conclusion arrived at being that it arose from the use of an imperfect instrument that could only produce five tones. Whatever the instrument so limited may have been, it was neither the primitive flute (like the tin whistle) of six vents, which is sufficient to produce well over an octave, nor was it the human voice. The universal use of the five note scale among many nations wide apart has never been satisfactorily explained. The following is an Irish pentatonic traditional air. [Music: THE SHAMROCK SHORE PENTATONIC] V. CHANGES THAT OCCUR IN FOLK-MUSIC That all traditional lore is subject to change is of course a well-recognised fact, and this change is so uncertain in its effects, and so erratic in its selection that no law appears to govern it. In ballads or prose narratives that exist only by verbal transmission we may expect the dropping of obsolete words and phrases, and this usually occurs; though sometimes corruptions of such remain and are meaningless to those who repeat them. For instance, in a certain singing-game, children of a particular district were accustomed to say— “She knocked at the door and picked up a pin.” It is quite obvious that the original stood— “She knocked at the door and tirled at the pin.” The “tirling pin” having completely gone out of usage, and even out of popular remembrance, in the limited area where it formerly served the purpose of attracting the attention of the householder, the phrase would have no meaning to the modern child; hence the change into something more comprehensible.