SONGS OF YESTERDAY

By Sydney Rose

The immense advancement in the science of sound re¬
production has had a noticeable effect on the ancient art
of balladry and its exponents, especially in the last score
of years. The automatic piano, the phonograph and—
latest and greatest—the radio, have stilled the vocalism
and virtuosity of countless warblers, fiddlers, cornetists,
mouth organists, flutists and accordian-expansionists, for¬
merly so audible in private life. The exercise of these
arts is left to the professional, and the results transmitted
at small expense to all and sundry.

There is, however, in these mechanical processes a
social loss. It is not easy to toss off a convivial glass to
a weird voice proceeding from illimitable ether—if even
the convivial glass were the commodity of yore. There
is nothing comforting in the assurance that "We have no
bananas" coming from celestial azure. Far be it from
us—stern upholders of Constitutional enactments—to sug¬
gest the beatific picture of a can and concertina; but the
true art of balladry lived, moved and had its being in
their conjuncture.

It is to the songs that soothed the savage breast of
"Hogan's Alley"—nay, the still more savage breast of
the "Five Points"—that we must direct our research for
the ballad in its ancient meaning—that is, a narrative in
song. F'rom Homer to Scott and after, valor, love and
the home fires were the themes to which they "smote their
blooming lyres"; and the heroes, the lovers and the local
deities of the Western World found poets aplenty to
[39]