Primitive people almost invariably attribute music to divine agency. We know the story of Orpheus, who moved the beasts and even the rocks and trees to tears by his sweet singing. We know also the story of the competition of Apollo the harp player and Marsyas the flute player. The Chinese say that they obtained their musical scale from a miraculous bird. The legend is interesting as showing how people tend to invent a supernatural explanation for the artificial laws which are felt to need some sort of superstitious bolstering up. For it is recorded in Chinese history that this scale has several times been changed by edict of the emperor, who considers an orthodox scale a very important thing to insist upon and wishes to have his word accepted as divine law. The Japanese tradition is that the sun-goddess once retired into a cave and the gods devised music to lure her forth once more. The story suggests the practice of certain primitive tribes who sing and dance during a solar eclipse, either to scare away the evil spirits or to beg the sun-god back into their midst. The Nahua Indians of North America say that the god Tezcatlipoca sent for music from the sun and made a bridge of whales and turtles by which to convey it to the earth. The Abyssinians have a tale to the effect that Yared transmitted music to men, the holy spirit having appeared to him in the form of a pigeon. But in the story of the Javans there seems to be a kernel of scientific truth. They say that the earliest music was suggested to them by the wind whistling through a bamboo tube which had been left hanging on a tree.