Jingoism

“ It makes an effect that is fantastic out of objects that are familiar; and it makes a picture that is at once incredible and unmistakable. But it is yet more tenable, and here more to the point,{2} that this nursery rhyme is emphatically a rhyme. Both the lilt and the jingle are just right for their purpose, and are worth whole libraries of elaborate literary verse for children. And the best proof of its vitality is that the satirist himself has unconsciously echoed the jingle even in making the joke. The metre of that nineteenth-century satire is the metre of the nursery rhyme. ”

“ We all looked very gay in our new or clean clothing, and the mules pranced along, shaking their heads like a band of animal performers delighting in sweet sounds, for, fastened around their necks were some pounds of music in the shape of large iron bells, suspended from tinkling brass chains, which occasioned together a very harmonious jingle, not so soft, perhaps, as an Æolian harp, but which, considering our situation, was quite as striking in effect. ”

“ I have raked through various biographical dictionaries trying to discover who Younge 85E. Allison was, but without results. The man who wrote such a poem should not be unknelled, unhonored, and unsung. In your editorial touching the rhyme I don’t think you do it justice. You describe it as “a rough, unstudied sailor’s jingle,” whereas it is a work of art. Some of the lines are tremendous, and the whole poem has a haunting quality that never yet distinguished a mere jingle. ”

“ Laugh, laugh, little Jinnie, again—gain—gain,
Laugh, laugh, little Jinnie, again."
Ah me! what a strange, what a gladsome duet
From a house in the deeps of a wood!
Such shrill and such harsh voices never met yet
A-laughing as loud as they could, could, could,
A-laughing as loud as they could.
Come Jinnie, come dwarf, cocksparrow, and bee,
There's a ring gaudy-green in the dell,
Sing, sing, ye sweet cherubs, that flit in the tree;
La! who can draw tears from a well, well, well,
Who ever drew tears from a well! ”

“ As a natural outgrowth of the acquaintance with old words comes the power to decipher new words. The phonic lessons are well graded, and the subject is [iv] properly subordinated to thought getting. The appeal made to the primitive, æsthetic enjoyment of the jingle, with simple melody and captivating rhythm, as the phonics are presented, is followed by the gratification of finding them contributory to the ability to read the classic rimes which follow. ”

“ Any adult who may read these jingles should be informed that many of them were written when Winifred was hardly more than a babe. And all of them were dashed off without effort to achieve poetic merit. One characteristic that makes them of interest is their spontaneity. As an illustration of the readiness with which Winifred can construct a jingle, I may say that when she was twelve years of age, I happened one day to read her the following essay on Bones written by a pupil:
"Bones is the framework of the body. If I had no bones in me, I should not have so much shape as I have now. ”

“ At the jingle of the sleighbells dance off lighter than a feather,—
How the jingle,
An’ the ringle,
Raises lowest spirits high!
Hark! the tingle,
Jingle, tingle!
As the cutter dashes by!
When the moon is bright a-shinin’ an’ a-sparkle is the snow,
’Tis the plainest invitation just invitin’ one to go
For a rollic an’ a frolic ’hind a pair of prancin’ steeds,—
The very kind of tonic that a tired body needs,—
How the jingle,
An’ the ringle,
In the crisp an’ frosty air,
An’ the tingle,
Jingle, tingle,
Hypnotizes anxious care! [Pg 40]
E’en the stars are all a-twinkle! ”

“ But next week the following denial appeared in N. & Q., “I beg to state, as author and composer of the above song, that this statement is unwarrantable and devoid of truth, and in justice to my reputation as a composer, I must request that you will insert this my denial.—G. W. Hunt.”
On the Warlike Newspapers.
We don’t want to fight,
But by Jingo! if you do,
We’ve got the ink, we’ve got the pens,
And we’ve got the papers too.
Punch.
The Duke of Connaught with the Reserves.
There’s Connaught does not want to fight,
But, by Jingo, if he do;
He has to be kept out of range,
And out of danger too. ”

“ And, in a sudden reaction of mad delight, he began to dance a wild jig in the middle of the room, a jig mingled with bits of can-can and the contortions of the cakewalk and the whirls of a dancing dervish and the acrobatic movements of a clown and the lurching steps of a drunken man. ”

“ The arts of singing and of instrumental music have the same origin and evolution as the others. Vico, Strabo, and others have asserted that primitive men spoke in song, and there is great truth in the remark. Since gesture and pantomime help out the meaning of imperfect speech, which was at first poor in the number of words and their relative forms, and this is still the case among many peoples, so song, vocal modulation, and the rhythmic expression of speech seem to stimulate emotion. ”

“ The jingle of this measure is irresistible, and with a good vocabulary of any savage language at one’s elbow, one feels a pleasing confidence that the strain might spin on for ever, and almost make itself. ”

“ In an age of imitation, I can claim no sort of merit for this slight attempt at doing what is known to be so easy. Anyone who knows what verse is, with the slightest ear for rhythm, can throw off a composition in the easy running metre of 'The Song of Hiawatha.' Having, then, distinctly stated that I challenge no attention, in the following little poem, to its merely verbal jingle, I must beg the candid reader, to confine his criticism to its treatment of the subject. ”

“ She makes that usually tedious grand aria, which every singer makes a mess of, quite lovely and musical, hovering as she does in the regions above the upper line like a butterfly and trilling like a canary-bird. A Chinese juggler does not play with his glass balls more dexterously than she plays with all the effects and tricks of the voice. ”

“ In the matter of hymn-melodies an unbarred rhythm has very decided advantages over a barred rhythm. In the former the melody has its own way, and dances at liberty with the voice and sense; in barred time it has its accents squared out beforehand, and makes steadily for its predetermined beat, plumping down, as one may say, on the first note of every bar whether it will or no. ”

“ Old Trinder had not sent to the station for me, and it was pelting rain, so I had to drive seven miles in a thing that only exists south of the Limerick Junction, and is called a “jingle”. A jingle is a square box of painted canvas with no back to it, because, as was luminously explained to me, you must have some way to get into it, and I had to sit sideways in it, with my portmanteau bucking like a three-year-old on the seat opposite to me. ”

“ The unfettered cheerfulness which runs through the whole of the movement is expressed in these few bars, given by the violas like a call to the merry chase. The opening of the C major quintet prepares us in an equally decided manner for what is to follow. The decision and thoughtfulness which form the ground-tone of the whole movement, in spite of its lively agitation, are calmly and clearly expressed in the first few bars. ”

“ They are completely satisfied to express all emotion by melody, sometimes combined with the dance, and yet do not feel the monotony, which would be obviated by additional voices.
But it must be said that, so far as melody goes, they have great taste and discrimination; the music often approaches the European in form and rhythm, and the Hindoo seems to feel instinctively 13 the importance of the tonic, and dominant, and often finishes the phrases of a melody with a half cadence. ”

“ The universe is implicit. The ultimate gift of Jiménez is a song of life, liquid and gemmed, within whose moment silence is an inner flame. This flame is simple and constant. The variation in the poems is the outturning into surfaces of mood and color. The flame is One. Life’s mystery is its becoming form, its creating for itself out of a single depth numberless facets, out of whiteness many tints, out of silence, song. ”

“ As will be seen, these phonic jingles contain words that are alike in symbol as well as in sound. It is confusing to the child at this early stage of the work to have before his eyes different symbols for the same sound, as is the case, for instance, when he has high and sky to rime with I, or see and me to rime with sea. ”

“ All you've got to do is sneak yourself into the public eye. Once that happens, the public asks questions. What happened to Tanker Bell? Why isn't he fighting the Champ? Know what I mean?"
"Don't you think they're askin' questions now?"
"Sure. But they ain't doin' it en masse. See?"
"Yeah," said Charlie Jingle softly. "Yeah. What I gotta do is hit Pugs, Inc. where they ain't got control of the situation. Where they don't have their stooges workin' to keep things quiet." ”

“ An expressive recitative is followed by a single movement (allegro, F minor) in incessant agitation, the almost uninterrupted triplets of the stringed instruments giving it the character of trembling unrest. The voice part is very striking by reason of its decided rhythm and frequent dissonant intervals; but it is mostly declamatory, and there is no appearance of a cantilene proper; the wind instruments give effect to the strong accents. The whole song pursues its rapid course like a gloomy nocturne, and dies away at last in a dull moan. ”

“ Poor Jean Jacques, little dreamedst thou, in that cruel moment, that one day before the king of France and all the court, thy sounds would excite murmurs of surprise and applause, and that in all the boxes around thee the loveliest ladies would burst forth with, “What 224 charming sounds! what enchanting music! every strain reaches the heart!”
But what restored every one to good humor was the minuet. ”

“ Seeing what a congenial soul he had found in the painter, Jingleum freely supplied his wants, and wrote divers madrigals at his suggestion, with which Herman charmed the ears of Miss Loring. The poet soon became his intense admirer and perpetual visiter; they grew fast friends, and soon came to regard each other, the one as the divinest poet, the other as the most finished singer, under the moon. ”

“ From the very earliest times a peculiar magical potency has been ascribed to words woven into rhythmic form. The fascination which metrical expression, even as a mere jingle and jargon, still retains for the youth of the individual was yet far more strongly felt in the youth of the race. The simple song was intoned as a spell and the rude chant mumbled as a charm.
In France the conjuration of field-mice bears a more distinctly religious stamp. ”

“ This ultimately led to a universal conception of the efficacy of sound, considered as the manifestation of occult powers. In this mythically spiritual atmosphere, all peoples formerly lived and in great part still continue to live.
As the innate impulse led to the entification of speech and of the singing of men and animals, so it also led to the mythical personification of dancing and instrumental music, in which nearly all peoples have [Pg 311] recognized a demoniac and deliberate power. ”

“ The sight of a poor creature grubbing for rhymes to fill up his sonnet, or to cram one of those voracious, rhyme-swallowing rigmaroles which some of our drudging poetical operatives have been exhausting themselves of late to satiate with jingles, makes my head ache and my stomach rebel. Work, work of some kind, is the business of men and women, not the making of jingles! ”

“ To meet the ever-dreaded King
To whom all lives must pay.
Concerning this jingle Elbert Hubbard said: "Dear Little Friend: This is your masterpiece of word painting descriptive of courage, anguish and man's helplessness." ”

“ Each movement, though not completely separate, has yet a certain independence, with melodies of its own rounded into a simple song-like form; there is no attempt at the elaboration, or even the full development, of a motif, but everything presses onwards, each section leading as of necessity to the next, which is intended to form a lively contrast to what has preceded it. ”

“ In the last verse, he surpassed himself. He glowered round upon us with a look of such concentrated ferocity that, but for our being forewarned as to the German method of comic singing, we should have been nervous; and he threw such a wailing note of agony into the weird music that, if we had not known it was a funny song, we might have wept. ”

“ But nature's rarest gift to her was her voice, a mellow contralto, whose skillful modulations stole refreshingly to the senses amid the sharp clash of strained and higher tones, the castanet-like jingle which most American belles ring unmercifully into the ears of their auditors. ”

“ He rather sensibly imagines that such everlasting singing may in time produce hoarseness, so he prepares his vocal organs for the long concert by a vigorous discipline while here, and at the same time cultivates instrumental music, having a dim idea that the Lord has an ear for melody, and will let him, when he is tired of singing, vary the exercise "wid de banjo and de bones." ”

“ The dance (in which general term one includes the supplementary art of pantomime) alone perhaps can express these conceptions of modern mythology, and the embodiment, the reality, which Karsavina and Nijinsky give to them is possible only through their perfection in that art. Than Nijinsky’s performance in “Le Carnaval,” no more complete exposition can be imagined of all that the dancer’s art comprises. ”