duced the
miraculous effect was that of Kouei, the Orpheus of the Chinese, whose
performance on the _king_, a kind of harmonicon constructed of slabs of
sonorous stone, would draw wild animals around him and make them
subservient to his will.

"The Japanese have a beautiful tradition, according to which the
Sun-goddess, in resentment of the violence of an evil-disposed brother,
retired into a cave, leaving the universe in darkness and anarchy; when
the beneficent gods, in their concern for the welfare of mankind,
devised music to lure her forth from her retreat, and their efforts soon
proved successful.

"The Kalmucks, in the vicinity of the Caspian Sea, adore a beneficient
divinity called Maidari, who is represented as a rather jovial-looking
man, with a mustache and imperial, playing upon an instrument with three
strings, somewhat resembling the Russian _balalaika_.

"Almost all these ancient conceptions we meet with, also, among European
nations, though more or less modified.

"Odin, the principal deity of the ancient Scandinavians, was the
inventor of magic songs and Runic writings.

"In the Finnish mythology the divine Vainamoinen is said to have
constructed the five-stringed harp, called _kantele_, the old national
instrument of the Finns. The frame he made out of the bones of a pike,
and the teeth of the pike he used for the tuning-pegs. The strings he
made of hair from the tail of a spirited horse. When the harp fell into
the sea and was lost, he made another, the frame of which was birchwood,
with pegs made out of the branch of an oak-tree. As strings for this
harp he used the silky hair of a young girl. Vainamoinen took his harp,
and sat down on a hill, near a silvery brook. There he played with so
irresistible an effect that he entranced whatever came within hearing of
his music. Men and animals listened, enraptured; the wildest beasts of
the forests lost their ferocity; the birds of the air were drawn toward
him; the fishes rose to the surface of the water and remained immovable;
the trees ceased to wave their branches; the brook retarded its course
and the wind its haste; even the mocking echo approached stealthily, and
listened with the utmost attention to the heavenly sounds. Soon the
women began to cry; then the old men and the children also began to cry,
and the girls and the young men--all cried for delight. At last
Vainamoinen himself wept, and his big tears ran over his beard and
rolled into th