WHEN and how did the printed language of music develop and become universal? - RB Job, Thirsk.

MUSICAL notation can be traced back to ancient Egypt around 300 BC, but the form we know today has its roots in ancient Greece. The earliest symbols of musical notation are called neumes and are thought to have developed from symbols in the Greek language which indicated pitch and inflection.

Neumes in music were used throughout Europe by the Sixth Century, but examples can only be traced to the Eighth Century. These neumes were formed by different-shaped squiggles and were little more than guides for Gregorian chanters. Singers were expected to know chants by ear and neumes formed a generalised representation of highs and lows.

In the 11th Century, a grid of four (and later five), horizontal lines called the staff was developed by an Italian monk called Guido D'Arezzo. He also introduced symbols at the beginning of each stave which developed into what we know as clefs. At around the same time, neumes were also redesigned to give a more precise indication of duration which enabled greater control over rhythm. By the 12th Century, thick black dots had been added at certain points on the individual neumes to indicate certain notes.

In France, the dots developed into black, diamond-shaped dots with stalks. These new, flag-like symbols were called ligatures and were an early form of musical note. In the 13th Century some developed names like minum, breve and semi-breve. By the 16th Century, the diamond-shaped ligatures were rounded like modern musical notes and musical notation was much the same as it is today.

WHAT is the "yella clay" sold by Cushie Butterfield in the song. - Hannah Lambell (aged five), Darlington.

THE verse which mentions yella clay is:

I's a broken hearted keel-lad and I's ower heed in love

With a young lass in Gateshead and I call her my dove

Her name's Cushie Butterfield and she sells yella clay

An her cousin is a muckman and they call him Tom Grey.

According to Cecil Geeson's Northumberland and Durham Word Book, yellow clay is hearthstone, a soft stone used for whitening hearths. Hearthstone was usually made from a compound of powdered stone and white coloured pipeclay, which could also be used for whitening leather.

Andy Guy, of Beamish Museum, thinks that, in the North-East, sandstone was mixed with pipeclay to give it a yellow tinge. He believes it was compressed into small brickettes which were faintly abrasive. Variations on the yellow clay were Donkey Stones which produced a whitened appearance on hearths and Rudd which could redden steps and hearths, although this was more associated with Cumbria

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