Magic Spell Research Articles

PEDIATRICS

There's no business like pediatrics. It's not the Cadillac of the medical specialties, but it holds many deeper rewards. Our patients still view the world with awe, and believe in us and Santa Claus. They haven't learned rich or poor, black or white. They're growing instead of declining, and haven't yet found the degenerative diseases. They know when the newest Walt Disney is in town, what the plot is, what the ending is, and how to wheedle us into taking them. They turn off their tears when mission is accomplished. Their youthful enthusiasm is contagious, and if you're not careful, they'll sprinkle you with the fountain of youth. They'll go to school with a temp. of 103, because it's picture day. What the teacher says is gospel, straight from the top. They'll make you laugh during the school play, and weep at the teacher conference. They cart old milk cartons off to kindergarten, and mysteriously return with your Christmas gift. You'll open it first, look surprised, and feel very proud. They'll squeeze every present under the tree, and ask, "Is this one for me?" Halloween is their Mardi Gras, and when they don those masks and costumes, they're monster, ghost or vampire, and you'd better be scared. They still haven't deduced who disposed of that bag of goodies they tricked and treated for. They will listen to you read the same story over and over, and you don't dare skip any pages. Cartoons are their passion, and you could do a spinal tap while Bugs Bunny weaves his magic spell.

Breaking the Magic Spell: Politics and the Fairy Tale

Politics and the fairy tale. Power struggles and magic. One is tempted to ask what all those enchanting, loveable tales about fairies, elves, giants, kings, queens, princes, princesses, dwarfs, witches, peasants, soldiers, beasts and dragons have to do with politics. One is tempted by the magic spell of the tales, so it would seem, to obliterate their real historical and social basis and to abandon oneself to a wondrous realm where class conflict does not exist

Parthenophil and Parthenophe

Barnes s collection of sonnets, madrigals, elegies, and odes was published in 1593 and was the first of such collections to appear since Sir Philip Sidney s earlier Astrophel and Stella. Like Sidney s collection, Parthenophil and Parthenophe a series of protestations of love, here of poems praising Parthenophe s beauty or persuading her to grant her love to Parthenophil. The volume concludes with a triple sestina in which the lover casts a magic spell on his mistress and consummates his love. Barnes s sonnets and other poems represent the combination of conventional Petrarchan idealism with the classical attitude toward eroticism. A long- neglected minor masterpiece of Elizabethan literature, Barnes s work emerges here in its first modern edition as a carefully structured transformation of the Petrarchan genre which combines historical importance with intrinsic worth.In addition to his careful editing of the text, Mr. Doyno has provided substantial commentary on the poems, dealing with previously unknown sources, the rhetorical background, and various problems of interpretation. In addition, in his lengthy introduction he deals with the relevant biography of Barnes, his probable intentions in composing the sonnets, and the classical and renaissance background for the poems. Mr. Doyno s introduction is the first detailed critical evaluation of Barnes s work, and, like his edition of Parthenophil and Parthenophe, certain to stand as definitive for some time to come.

Araucanian Indian Instruments

t is a well-known fact that at the time of the European conquest America had undergone the first two stages for the evolution of instruments as established by Rowbotham: the cycle of drums, and the cycle of flutes. Ethnographers have today completely abandoned the idea of the existence of stringed instruments in the Pre-Columbian era. Consequently, the alleged presence of rabel players at the Court of Montezuma belongs to the sphere of the many myths generated in some early Spanish writings. Garcilaso de la Vega never mentioned them, and all available iconographic documents from the Inca empire, so rich in designs of flutes and drums, show no traces of stringed instruments. References to Araucanian Indian music are somewhat scarce among colonial chroniclers and historians, and those few that are available in their writings reflect a poor evaluation of the same. Nevertheless, the opinions of contemporary ethnomusicologists do not agree on this. Isamitt,1 Allende,2 Lavin,3 and others, have certainly found musical accomplishments among these natives worth considering on a level of interest in no way inferior to those of other Indo-American groups. In spite of their complete unawareness of harmony, Isamitt writes, we can observe in their music clear melodic forms and great rhythmic variety.'4 The prevalence of the intervals of the fourth (sometimes combined with those of the third and fifth), and occasionally touching upon sevenths and octaves and even on some intermediate intervals not available in our temperate system, constitute their basic stylistic devices. The nature of musical activity among the Araucanian Indians, as well as that of the instruments employed by them is intimately related to ritual and religion. Even today, the magic spell attached to each of their instruments largely determines the occasion and place of its use. Their worship of Nanechen, God and owner of the World,'5 as well as their conjurations against evil spirits are always linked to certain instruments, or even, at times, to certain combinations of instruments; these festivities are even associated with certain melodic patterns well known to contemporary musicologists. A wind instrument known as the trutruka is perhaps the most commonly used by these natives; it is made of a kind of bamboo known as kiila which grows wild in the inlands of Southern Chile. Its employment is always linked with collective rituals of supplication having to do with such matters as lack of rain or food, the weather, or prayers to get rid of pests and social misfortunes. This instrument is also used by smaller groups on the occasion of family reunions or of funeral ceremonies.

Prof. William Peddie

PROF. WILLIAM PEDDIE, who died at his home in Dundee on June 2, was born in Papa Westray, one of the most northerly islands in Orkney, in 1861. He was a son of the manse, his father being a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He was educated at Kirkwall Grammar School, learning to be a sailor as well as a mathematician-a friend speaks of being compelled to admiration by his superb handling of their craft in a nasty bit of sea. In 1880 he entered the University of Edinburgh, where he studied natural philosophy under P. G. Tait and mathematics under George Chrystal. In 1883 he was appointed University assistant in natural philosophy and formed a close association with Tait, in whose physical laboratory he worked. In an article on Tait and his work written many years later, Peddie records the intense admiration felt for the great master by all his students : “From the record of his life and work, men who never knew him may come under the magic spell and be enrolled in the list of his disciples”. Tait had early expressed the hope that the large subject of natural philosophy would before long be represented by two chairs. The first step was taken in 1892, when C. G. Knott was appointed lecturer in applied mathematics and W. Peddie lecturer in natural philosophy.

THE FETISH OF VIRTUOSITY

P EOPLE are growing more and more inclined to yawn at those unhuman creatures in pink tights that, with a superlative skill acquired by life-long practice, perform balancing feats which are entirely inane and uninteresting. These unfortunate folk have devoted their lives to diverting the public, gauging the course of their activities naturally and necessarily by the amount of applause which each turn receives. But the public, once delighted and thrilled, has become sophisticated; it ceases to be fooled by the pretense of danger and difficulty, and turns away, bored. Hence, the acrobatic acts are now termed, in the lingo of continuous vaudeville, chasers; they are used to discourage tight sitters, and clear the seats for new comers. So, the victims of a whim find their life-work suddenly become imbecilic, with nothing to show for their arduous and wearisome training but unnatural and cumbersome muscles. In that more pretentious world of the concert-halls, which maintains a more hushed and dignified sense of its own importance, there are acrobats, too, acrobats of the piano and violin, with a remarkable skill acquired in exactly the same manner, but the magic spell of culture calls them virtuosi, and their skill, technique, with the help of which distinguished passwords the same human need for diversion goes under the name of high art. The most essential difference between the two forms of entertainment is that the one public is disillusioned as to the tricks, and looks elsewhere for something not so entirely devoid of sense as skill for skill's sake, while the other public flocks to the lure of billboards and world renown, pays enormous sums, and beholds, in puerile wonderment and delight, feats which dazzle, and leave in their wake little more than a tingle of stupefaction. This public, which we know so well, seems highly satisfied with that contemptible institution, the concertowith rare exceptions, a mere show case, wherein the soloist may spread forth his technical jewels baldly on black velvet, to be appraised by the connoissueurs. It cares little for a magnificent orchestra, but mainly for the soloist who tries to outdo them in what might be called the birth-struggle between a sonata and a