ABSTRACT
Plans for the 'The Legend of Jubal' are found in Eliot's Notebook for 1868-c. 70 (Folger M.a.l3): '(Tubalcain) Vision of Jubal' appears under 'Themes for Poems'. In the same list Eliot also quoted from the Bible:
(* Land ofN od in the East of Eden: :And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, & the name of the other was Zillah, And Adah bare Jubal [sic; Jabal]: he was the father of all such as dwell in tents & as such as have cattle. And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as have the harp & organ. And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructor of every artifice in brass & iron: & the sister ofTubalcain was Naamah. Gen. IV 19-22) (cf. Pratt and Neufeldt, pp. 72, 154-5) Eleven note book pages after the ' Themes for
Poems', she made the following entry; clarifYing for herselfJubal's genealogy (cf. Pratt and Neufeldt, pp. 78-9, 160):
The entry '(Tubalcain) Vision of Jubal' suggests that Eliot worked from ancient sources - or at least from scholars who knew them. In medieval times, the name 'Jubal' was sometimes mistakenly copied as 'Tubal', and
thereafter it became possible for the Tubal born of poor orthography to be mistaken for a shortened form of Tubalcain. As a result of this error, Tubalcain, the Biblical blacksmith, was sometimes credited with the musical abilities which Genesis had bestowed upon his brother Jubal. (Beichner, p. 7) However, medieval writers 'consistently make Jubal
(often spelled Tubal) the discoverer of music because of the reference in the Bible and not his brother Tubalcain' (Beichner, p. 27):
Peter Comestor's Historia scholastica ( 1190s) records that Jubal 'discovered the art after hearing his brother Tubalcain pounding upon metals. The Greek tradition, spoken of by St. Isadore, crediting the discovery of music to Pythagoras with his hammers is thus transferred and grafted to the Biblical. (Beichner, p. 10) This is the version Eliot follows in her poem ( cf.
