In the previous chapter I laid emphasis on the conclusion that the fingers were the fates of the musical scale. In these pipes I read the same lesson, and recognize that the scale was due to digital decision. The mystery of numbers pervading the thoughts of the people, and ruling their daily goings, consorted here with convenience of the fingers. The sacred number “four” took the first place, after that the number “three,” and—the union of these producing the number “seven”—the thoughts of numbers moved in an enchanted circle, from which the human race has not yet escaped. We call it superstition to believe in lucky threes and sevens; to these old Egyptians, numbers were a sacred power never to be disregarded. Here, in the four holes of the first pipe we have the primitive tetrachord, planned before the sounds were heard, before the issuing notes had names; and it was this tetrachord that was taken up by the Greeks, and by them moulded into mathematical relations and blended by art into musical form. A similar primitive tetrachord was, I conceive, common to all races of men possessing a musical scale. The second pipe has but three holes; there was room for more,—why restricted to three? Who can tell? It is as easy to have faith in one mystic number as in another; and when we are inclined to believe in the mystical, nature helps us with the utmost readiness. In using the word “tetrachord” bear in mind that the meaning is a series of four notes in an order of succession, and not the union of notes as a compound sound or “chord.” Pipes with but two holes are common in pastoral use now, and in early times doubtless preceded those with three and four holes; and, however slow the changes, progress could not be absent. In Lady Maket’s pipes we see evidence of a great change, a tetrachord with an added tone, and this supplied by another pipe. Who can tell how many centuries of civilization such progress indicates? An interesting speculation centres upon the means by which the sounds were produced. Were the pipes lip blown at one end, or reed blown; and, if the latter, by what reed? One of the hautboy kind, or one of the clarionet type such as the arghool? The first is called a double, and the other a single reed. Fig. 6 is an illustration of the arghool reed, full size, as used at this day in the arghool; it is called a beating reed; the reed tongue is made by cutting a slip at the side and lifting it a little, and, as it is bound by string at one end, the tip tilts, allowing passage for the wind through the aperture that the cutting has left beneath, upon the edges of which it beats in vibrating. [Illustration: _Fig. 6._ _The Arghool Reed. Full Size._] [Illustration: _Fig. 7._ _The Hautboy Reed. Full Size._]