A very little music is ordinarily enough for me; and though I do not say that an evening at the Opera, especially when the Russians are dancing, or an afternoon at Queen's Hall now and then, is not very welcome, I would not too often be found at either. Sophisticated self-conscious music makes me too old, and the world too old, and its enigmas too difficult, and all that is best too fugitive. But these ancient English songs of an unthinking peasantry do not trouble the waters; they make for joy. It seems to me that essential melody never reached a more exquisite purity than in "Mowing the Barley," and I often wonder what Society would say if, without any warning, when they were all securely in their seats at the Opera, in their best clothes, and had finished ascertaining who their immediate neighbours were, and who occupied the boxes, the curtain rose, not upon the voluptuous passion of _La Bohème_, or the civilized ache of _Louise_, or the barbaric excesses of _Scheherazade_, but upon a company of youths and children and maidens singing this lovely song. After the first shock of surprise, anxious searching of influential countenances and bewildered references to the programme, might they not settle down to the profoundest content? And as song gave way to dance, and dance to song--"Blow away the Morning Dew" to "Laudnum Bunches," and "Dargason" to "The Keys of Heaven," and "I'm Seventeen come Sunday" to "Lord Rendal"--might they not experience a feeling wholly new in that building and wholly pleasurable? For there is nothing like a plunge into the simple life now and then. And yet--I don't know. It might be dangerous. These songs are too fascinating: Mayfair would be decimated. There is one of them so infectious in its melody, so irresistible in its appeal, that it should be rigidly excluded from the programme. The Italian's _La Bohème_, which sets so many of our stately dames in a quiver, is quite safe compared with this concise English treatment of the same theme. For "The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies" has the very seeds of revolt and escape in it. Here is the first verse: [Illustration: Music fragment] There were three gip-sies a-come to my door, And down-stairs ran this a la dy, O! One sang high an an-oth-er sang low And the oth er sang bon-ny, bon-ny Bis cay, O! Then she pulled off her silk finished gown And put on hose of leather, O! The ragged, ragged rags about our door-- She's gone with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O. It was late last night, when my lord came home, Inquiring for his a-lady, O! The servants said, on every hand: "She's gone with the wraggle taggle gipsies, O." There's a new version of _La Bohème_ for you, and no less provocative! I do not hear Caruso in it; but Caruso is not all. His lordship at last overtakes the rebel: