The Music of Hindostan c11.15

c11.15

The fourteen versions of a song variously called ‘The seeds of love’, ‘The sprig of thyme’, &c., given in the annexed example, have been taken from the volumes of the *English Folk-song Society's Journal*, and one of them from *Sharp's Folk-songs of Somerset*. When the English counties have been thoroughly explored, there will prove to be not fourteen, but very likely forty or four hundred of such versions. The first seven of these are, however, enough to show how a melody may take various shapes and yet centre in a common mode; and also how by a slight shift of the centre of gravity, brought about by the battle of its several phrases for supremacy, the melody slips from one mode to another. At the end of each melody is set the scale in which it appears to lie, with the strong (*balin*) and weak (*alpa*) notes marked, and after these the name of the *Rāg* to which in principle, though not, of course, in detail, this scale corresponds.