Every town had its own band called the _Stadt Pfeifferei_ (town pipers). The peasant boys played the fiddle, and the shepherds the _schalmey_, (a kind of oboe). Every festivity was accompanied by song and dance. IRISH FOLK SONGS No people in the world have more fancy and imagination, a keener sense of humor, are more fun-loving and more superstitious than the Irish. All these qualities come out in their vast treasure of folk music, which is considered the most beautiful and the most varied of all the music that has come from peasant folk. The subjects cover practically every phase of life from the castle to the cot, and songs of every heading we have included in the last chapter. There are reels, jigs, marches, spinning-tunes, nurse-tunes, planxties (Irish or Welsh melodies for the harp in the nature of a lament), plough-songs and whistles. The Irish folk songs are rich historically as well as beautiful musically. The form of the Irish folk music is perfect, and is a model of what simple song form has been for several centuries. In fact, all large forms have been built on just such principles of balance and contrast as are found in an Irish folk song called _The Flight of the Earls_. SCOTCH AND WELSH TUNES The Scotch and Welsh also have a very rich store of folk song and ballads. Along with the Irish they are children of the early Celts and have brought down to us the music of early times. In all this music we find the pentatonic scale, and a rhythm of this character ♩♩ ♩♩ a dotted note followed by a note of shorter value, which gives a real lilt to Irish, Welsh and Scotch music. We told you about the Welsh bards and their queer violin without a neck, called a _crwth_, and their little harp that was handed around their banquet tables from guest to guest. The Gaelic music, or that of the Scotch Highlands, dates back to prehistoric times. You have seen a Scotch Highlander in his plaid and kilties playing on his bagpipe, and it has a special kind of scale (two pentatonic scales put together) like this: G A B D E G A B C♯ E F♯ A and a drone bass (one tone that does not change and is played all through the piece) which makes it hard to get the same effect on the piano. Scotch bagpipes are heard in districts where the milk-maids and serving folk get together in the “ingle,” and still “lilt” in the good old-fashioned way. The thing that makes us know Scotch music from any other is a queer little trick of the rhythm called the _snap_ in which a note of short value is followed by a dotted note of longer value, instead of the other way around which is more commonly found. Thus: ♩♩ ♩♩ but the two ways are always combined, thus: ♩♩ ♩♩|♩♩ ♩♩ ♩♩|♩♩ and so on. If you want to make up a real Scotch tune yourself, just play this rhythm up and down the black keys of the piano from F# to the next F#!