yet been studied. The notes are not written down[1] but are handed on by experts, generally blind singers. This leads to considerable variation in form. Grace-notes and ornamental modifications are added ad libitum. Where there is no choir the people sing; they appear familiar with the general form of the tune, but everyone adds little ornaments of his own, and they do not at all mind not keeping together. Their tunes are obviously enharmonic, and abound in the augmented second.[2] I regret to say that the influence of British brass bands and French gramophones begins to effect a certain tendency towards diatonic, or at least chromatic notes, and an appalling inclination to sharpen the last note but one. It would be well to obtain some record of their traditional melodies before they have preverted all into our minor scale with a sharpened leading note.[3] But so far this tendency seems to obtain only in Cairo and Alexandria. In the villages you may still hear the real thing. They have, of course, no organs; but they accompany their singing by ringing bells and clashing cymbals, with the strangest effect.
People rarely go to Communion, generally once a year, at Easter or thereabouts (practically during Lent). The Copts certainly once reserved the Holy Eucharist for the sick.[4] Now they no longer do so, and have no kind of tabernacle or vessel for reservation.
The Ecclesiastical Calendar has a peculiar reckoning, the "Era of the Martyrs."[5] This means from the martyrs of Diocletian's reign. It begins on the 29 of Mesōri (August),[6] 284, of our calculation. Otherwise they follow the Julian Calendar. This year then (1913) is 1629 of the Martyrs. In civil life they date by
- ↑ Father Badet, S.J., has collected some in Les Chants liturgiques des Coptes, 2 parts, lithographed, Cairo, 1899.
- ↑ Cf. Vansleb: Hist. de l'Église d'Alex. pp. 56-58.
- ↑ Badet, on the contrary, thinks that the older Coptic tunes are really diatonic (in seven tones, on re, la, mi, si, fa, do, sol), and that enharmonic intervals come from Arab influence (op. cit. pp. v, 24). I am sure this is not possible. The diatonic scale is a purely Western invention.
- ↑ See Renaudot: Hist. Patr. Alex. 429-430, for evidences of this and for an account of its discontinuation.
- ↑ Ar.: Sanat ash-Shahadā.
- ↑ The names of the months in Boḥairic, Sa'idic and Arabic will be found in Mallon: Grammaire Copte, p. 81. For the Æra Martyrum see Nilles in the Innsbrucker Zeitschrift f. Kath. Theol. 1897, pp. 579 and 732.
