Fret

“ An Amazonian Indian will listen enrapt for hours to the repetition of the same monotonous song, which produces on civilized ears only increasing torture. The fret is at first drawn with all its unity running in the same direction, but in course of time it is found that a change of direction not only relieves the eye but gives greater pleasure, and the series comes to be broken up into bars, alternating in direction. This is observable not only in the classic Greek frets, but also in similar ornaments in America. ”

“ On stringed instruments that have fingerboards, like the lute or guitar, the small pieces of wood or other material fixed transversely on the fingerboard at regular intervals are called frets. The object they serve is to mark off the length of string required to produce a given note. Pressure upon a string immediately above a fret makes at the point of contact of string and fret a temporary 'nut,' and the string, set in motion as far as the bridge on the soundboard by plucking with plectrum or finger, or bowing, gives a higher note in proportion to the shortening of the string. ”

“ The fret patterns are all modifications of corresponding spirals. The cause of such change is obviously the influence of weaving. As early as the Vth dynasty we find a fret of rhombic form in basket-work in the screen behind the figure of Ptah·bau·nefer, at Gizeh. ”

“ First, I shall tell the papas and mammas—Don’t scold the children, just because you have been at a party the night before, and so feel cross and tired. Second, Don’t fret and make wrinkles in your faces over things that cannot be helped. I think fretting spoils big folks just as much as it does us little people. ”

“ You will furthermore perceive that the exaggerated affirmations people are always indulging in have led to the weakening of many a word. Fret meant eat; formerly to say that a man was fretting was to use a vigorous comparison—to have the man devoured with care. ”

“ You would play upon me: you would seem to know my stops; ... you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ [the recorder] , yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood! do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.
The holes in a flute have always been called 'ventages,' because the 'wind' comes through them [Pg 52] when the fingers are removed. ”

“ Mr Galpin (p. 46) quotes from Thomas Mace’s Musick’s Monument, 1676, the proper method of “fretting” a lute or similar instrument. The frets, or horizontal strings or wires which make cross ridges on the neck of lutes, viols, etc., I had ignorantly imagined to be guides to the beginner as to where to stop the string; but it appears (Galpin, p. 46) that they “add to its tone and resonance by keeping the string from touching the p. 77finger-board too closely.” The word “fret” is said to be derived from the old French ferretté, i.e., banded with iron. ”

“ All frets are composed of straight lines. The illustrations from Fig. 3 to Fig. 23 are specimens of straight-lined ornaments. Taking the band or two horizontal parallel lines in Fig. 3, and marking off equidistant points on the upper and on the lower one, only alternating, and drawing vertical lines from these{27} points, we obtain the basis of a large class of frets. Figs. 4, 6, 7, and 8 show further developments of the fret. Figs. 5 and 18 show the elements of some Saracenic or Moresque frets, of which Figs. 11, 21, and 22 are developments. Figs. 6, 8, 12, 13 and 14
Figs. ”

“ The agencies of modification inherent in the art in its practice are such that any particular animal form extensively employed in decoration is capable of changing into or giving rise to any or to all of the highly conventional decorative devices upon which our leading ornaments, such as the meander, the scroll, the fret, the chevron, and the guilloche, are based. ”

“ We still, today, use straight lines and frets, and a multitude of beautiful forms, many of which, doubtless, have come down to us from an immense antiquity. They are normally beautiful and we shall always need them. ”

“ The Frets by which the six principal Strings were shortened, were represented, in Italy, by the numerals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, to which were afterwards added the numbers 10, 11, 12, written x, ẋ, ẍ. In France and England the place of these numerals was supplied by the letters a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, etc.: and, after a time, these letters came into general use on the Continent also. Of course, one plan was just as good as the other; but there was this important practical difference between them: in England and France a represented the Open String, and b the first Fret ”

“ We cannot make one hair white or black. You that are troubled, rest with us, for you cannot make shower or shine, foul or fair, with all your groaning. Did you ever bring a penny into the till by fretting, or put a loaf on the table by complaint? Murmuring is wasted breath, and fretting is wasted time. ”

“ Helen Hunt says there is one sin which seems to be everywhere, and by everybody is underestimated and quite too much overlooked in valuations of character. It is the sin of fretting. It is as common as air, as speech; so common that unless it rises above its usual monotone we do not even observe it. Watch any ordinary coming together of people, and we see how many minutes it will be before somebody frets—that is, makes more or less complaint of something or other, which probably every one in the room, or car, or on the street corner knew before, and which most probably nobody can help. ”

“ The noises of the life of the ship—not very loud at their worst, in such a case—are far behind you, and they come faintly to your ears, as if from another world. They do not seem real, as do the bubbling of the water under the bow, and the wash of it as it passes astern, and the faint noise of breaking seas, and the soft sound of the wind on the sails. ”

“ And when they sing my body sways with theirs, just as the sailor rolls his gait with the motion of the deck. We sing a good many of the old time tunes, and some that have not yet been translated into written song. ”

“ Merry sailor lads are we,
Upon the sea we go;
Singing quite new-fangled tunes,
And songs of long ago.
As we journey on our way
We sing, “Ye-ho, ye-ho”
While we are sailing the ocean. Chorus.
Away, away, our ship’s a tidy craft,
Away, away, we never stoop to graft ”

“ Terrors more pleasing, ne’er heard sweeter swell
Of music than from out your rocky cell.
Though the wind urge the doomèd ship away,
Though favouring breezes fill her bellying sails,
Still can one sweet low voice the vessel stay,
One loving whisper calm the boisterous gales. ”

“ To unaccustomed ears, the sounds on this occasion lead one to suppose the ship is going to pieces; while the cries for help from the broken-shinned, sea-sick landsmen, the bawling for cleats and lashings from the mate of the decks, the thumping of hammers, and the loud laugh of the light-hearted middies, enchanted with the uproar, make a fine concert. ”

“ The rippling of the tide, the noise of the sailors’ feet overhead, the gruff voices on the river, the dogs on the shore, the snoring of the passengers, and a constant creaking of every plank in the vessel, are the only sounds that meet the ear. ”

“ But in a gale, the silent machinery of a sailing-ship would catch not only the power, but the wild and exulting voice of the world's soul. Whether she ran with her tall spars swinging, or breasted it with her tall spars lying over, there was always that wild song, deep like a chant, for a bass to the shrill pipe of the wind played on the seatops, with a punctuating crash, now and then, of a breaking wave. At times the weird effects of that invisible orchestra would get upon a man's nerves till he wished himself deaf. ”

“ A voice flees, when the breeze has touched and passed,
And glides within the singing chords....
As a light wind sings at a vessel's mast,
The sweet breath mounting from the river towards
The singer, binds a chant on the lyre's chords.
It is a wing wrinkling the wave, and in it glassed:
It is the vague word moving Nature through and through,
And which the human lip shall never speak.... ”

“ Ring a bell underneath an exhausted receiver, thou wilt scarce hear the sound; give the bell due vibration by free air in warm daylight, or sink it down to the heart of the ocean, where the air, all compressed, fills the vessel around it,' and the chime, heard afar, starts thy soul, checks thy footstep, unto deep calls the deep,—a voice from the ocean is borne to thy soul. ”

“ You listen eagerly to the chance snatches of a song from below, in the long morning watch. You love to see her small feet tottering on the unsteady deck; and you love greatly to aid her steps, and feel her weight upon your arm, as the ship lurches to a heavy sea. ”

“ To these songs of the forecastle, sung on the land as well as on the ocean, in beauty's bower as well as in the sailor's sanctuary or the stifled cabin, in days when accompaniments to vocal music were not considered necessary, when the full melodious sound of the human voice, THE NOBLEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD, was not strangled, drowned, or travestied by the noise of the everlasting piano, played with artistic skill to these spirit-stirring songs of the forecastle was commerce indebted for many of the finest and best sailors ever sprinkled with salt water. ”

“ When a favouring breeze allowed them to rest, they seldom indulged in sleep, but, sitting round in a ring upon the narrow deck, either told stories, or were amused by the dancing of one of the group, who, without changing his place, contrived to shift his feet very vigorously to the music of his own voice, and that of two sticks struck together to keep the time. ”

“ While the breezes they blow—
It's off for a sailor thy father would go;
And it's here in the harbor, in sight of the sea,
He hath left his wee babe with my song and with me"
⁠"Swing high and swing low
⁠While the breezes they blow!"
⁠Swing high and swing low
⁠While the breezes they blow—
It's oh for the waiting as weary days go!
And it's oh for the heartache that smiteth me when
I sing my song over and over again:
⁠"Swing high and swing low
⁠While the breezes they blow!" ”

“ On several starlight nights we danced on the upper deck, under the awnings, and made something of a ball-room display of brilliancy by hanging a number of ship’s lanterns to the stanchions. Our music consisted of the well-mixed strains of a melodeon which was a little asthmatic and apt to catch its breath where it ought to come out strong ”

“ A few of those who could sing, or imagined they could, were persuaded to exercise their vocal organs for the benefit of those who could sing and would not, and those who realized they had no voice and knew enough to remain quiet. At other times many of us went to the deck reserved for the second-class passengers and enjoyed the concerts given by them. When there were no chairs for us on this deck we would sit on the floor, and we all acknowledged that the first-class passengers could not furnish music that was any better. ”

“ WHY SHOULD WE QUARREL FOR RICHES.
[A version of this very favourite song may be found in Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany. Though a sailor’s song, we question whether it is not a greater favourite with landsmen. The chorus is become proverbial, and its philosophy has often been invoked to mitigate the evils and misfortunes of life.]
How pleasant a sailor’s life passes,
Who roams o’er the watery main!
No treasure he ever amasses,
But cheerfully spends all his gain. ”

“ HAS the observant reader ever remarked a couple of persons parading the deck of a ship at sea, walking step for step through half a day, turning with the same short jerk, to resume the same short path, and yet never interchanging a word, the rhythm of the footfall the only tie of companionship between them? They halt occasionally, too, to look over the bulwarks at some white sail far away, or some cloud-bank rising from the horizon ”

“ A good voice and a new and stirring chorus are worth an extra man. And there is plenty of need of both.
I remember well one black night in the mid-Atlantic, when we were beating up against a stiff breeze, coming on deck near midnight, just as the ship was put about. When a ship is tacking, the tacks and sheets (ropes which confine the clews or lower corners of the sails) are let run, in order that the yards may be swung round to meet the altered position of the ship. ”

“ And the guitar:—"Many a strain of thankful song has come from the depths of your heart, even now, in these your days of trial, to blend with my harmonies, and to soar to regions which my poor metallic music can never reach!"
And all the mute things sang together—"We are complete and rejoice to serve you, vessels meet for your using. One day you also shall be perfected, a vessel meet for the Master's use. And then He will take you into His house, unto the temple which is a home and your home for ever. Like us, when you are perfected, you shall serve ”

“ Away we scud, passing ships that think they are going pretty fast, but, O Neptune! our fins and tails take us along at a spanking rate, which makes the ships seem slow.
In one thing we are much like Folks. Don't laugh, please, but we are very, very fond of music. Sometimes we catch the sound of voices singing on a vessel, and up we go, leaping fairly into the air to get as near the sound as possible. ”