Rousseau says, "The celebrated Swiss tune, called the _Rans des Vaches_,
is an air, so dear to the Swiss, that it was forbidden under the pain of
death to play it to the troops, as it immediately drew tears from them,
and made those who heard it desert, or die of what is called _la maladie
de pays_, so ardent a desire did it excite to return to their native
country. It is in vain to seek in this air for energetic accents capable
of producing such astonishing effects, for which strangers are unable to
account from the music, which is in itself uncouth and wild. But it is
from habit, recollections, and a thousand circumstances retraced in this
tune by those natives who hear it, and reminding them of their country,
former pleasures of their youth, and all those ways of living, which
occasion a bitter reflection at having lost them. Music, then, does not
affect them as music, but as a reminiscence. This air, though always
the same, no longer produces the same effects at present as it did upon
the Swiss formerly; for having lost their taste for their first
simplicity, they no longer regret its loss when reminded of it. So true
it is, that we must not seek in physical causes the great effects of
sound upon the human heart."
This disease (says Dr. Winterbottom) affects the natives of Africa as
strongly as it does those of Switzerland; it is even more violent in its
effects on the Africans, and often impels them to dreadful acts of
suicide. Sometimes it plunges them into a deep melancholy, which induces
the unhappy sufferers to end a miserable existence by a more tedious,
though equally certain method, that of dirt eating.
Such is the powerful influence of the lore of one's native country.