One reason of the afflictive and discordant sounds is that the gamut of Korea differs from the musical scale of European countries, with the result that whenever music seems to be trembling on the verge of a harmony, a discord assails the ear. The musical instruments are many, but they are not carefully finished. Among instruments of percussion are drums, cymbals, gongs, and a species of castanet. For wind instruments there are unkeyed bugles, flutes, and long and short trumpets; and the stringed instruments are a large guitar, a twenty-five stringed guitar, a mandolin, and a five-stringed violin. The discord produced by a concert of several of these instruments is heard in perfection at the opening and closing of the gates of cities. There are three classes of Korean vocal music, the first being the _Si-jo_ or “classical” style, _andante tremuloso_, and “punctuated with drums,” the drum accompaniment consisting mainly of a drum beat from time to time as an indication to the vocalist that she has quavered long enough upon one note. The _Si-jo_ is a slow process, and is said by the Koreans to require such long and patient practise that only the dancing girls can excel in it, as they alone have leisure to cultivate it. One branch of it deals with convivial songs, of one of which I give a translation from the gifted pen of the Rev. H. B. Hulbert of Seoul.[22] The Korean, prisoned during the winter in his small, dark, dirty, and malodorous rooms, with neither a glowing fireside nor brilliant lamp to mitigate the gloom, welcomes spring with lively excitement, and demands music and song as its natural accompaniment--song that shall express the emancipation, breathing space, and unalloyed physical pleasure which have no counterpart in our English feelings. Thus a classical song runs:-- The willow catkin bears the vernal blush of summer’s dawn When winter’s night is done; The oriole, who preens herself aloft on swaying bough, Is summer’s harbinger; The butterfly, with noiseless _ful-ful_ of her pulsing wing, Marks off the summer hour. Quick, boy, thy zither! Do its strings accord? ’Tis well. Strike up! _I must have song._ The second style of Korean vocal music is the _Ha Ch’i_ or popular. The most conspicuous song in this class is the _A-ra-rüng_, of 782 verses. It is said that the _A-ra-rüng_ holds to the Korean in music the same place that rice does in his food--all else being a mere appendage. The tune, but with the trills and quavers, of which there are one or two to each note, left out, is given here, though Mr. Hulbert, to whom I am greatly indebted, calls it “a very weak attempt to score it.” [Illustration: A-ra-rüng a-ra-rüng a-ra-ri-o--- a-ra-rüng öl--sa pai ddi-ö-ra. Mun-gyung sai-chai pak-tala-n. mu---hong-do-kai pang-maing-i ta na-kan-da.]