a

It is supposed by Dr Ledwich, that the crotta, or crwth, was the primitive national instrument of the ancient Britons, and that they and the Irish were first made acquainted with the harp by their conquerors, the Saxons and the Danes, whose Princes and Scalds were eminent performers upon it, and by whom it was highly esteemed and cultivated. But this opinion, which seems to have been mainly founded upon the passage which we have above cited from Venantius, is one, in which we feel it to be altogether impossible to concur. Το suppose, as the learned antiquary does, (and he has not scrupled to express himself to that effect,) that the Celts either of Britain or of Ireland had allowed to be actually obtruded upon them, by their bitterest foes, a musical instrument which they have always cherished with a peculiarly warm feeling of patriotic regard, as one of the proudest symbols of their national independence, is an idea which can never be seriously entertained—and although we have no data to conclude as to the specific form of "the instruments like lyres," mentioned by Diodorus, and which Marcellinus, who follows after him, does not distinguish from lyres, we may at least be assured of this, that the Cruth (an instrument played with a bow, and supposed to be the parent of the fidicinal tribe) could not have been the instrument there referred to, bearing but a very slight resemblance to the lyre; while there is not a vestige, either in tradition or record, of any instrument possessed by the ancient inhabitants of Britain, which at all corresponds with that description, except the harp. This instrument, therefore, was either indigenous to the Celts,—or of Asiatic original, and communicated to them by the first Gothic colonists by whom they were visited, many years before the Christian era.

We should not have diverged into the regions of conjecture, so far as to make the above remarks as to a matter, in regard to which it must be admitted that we have no very authentic information to guide us; but it is by enquiries such as these, that the origin of the different nations of the ancient world is occasionally illustrated; and in that view, the early notices which exist of the harp are not the least important. It is to be hoped that much light will still be thrown upon this obscure subject.

Antiquities of Ireland, p. 230.

Most of our readers are acquainted with the story of the Theban harp,that ill-fated communication of the enlightened and enterprising Bruce of Abyssinian fame, to Dr Burney, which, from its extraordinary nature, was universally disbelieved, and drew down upon its author the unmerited sobriquet of the Theban lyre, (liar,) until very recently, when his memory has been rescued from this unmerited obloquy, by the researches of subsequent travellers. This was the delineation and description of a harp, from a painting contained in a sepulchre at the Egyptian Thebes. The instrument, as hastily drawn by Bruce, is represented with thirteen strings, and except that it wants the pillar or cross-bar, it is similar in construction to the harp with which we are familiar, while the general form and workmanship appear to have been superior in elegance to those of modern times. Mr Bruce remarked, that it overturned all the accounts of the earliest state of ancient music and instruments in Egypt; and in its form, ornaments, and compass, furnished an incontestable proof, that geometry, drawing, mechanics, and music, were at their greatest perfection when this harp was constructed. Dr Burney observes-" The mind is wholly lost in the immense antiquity of the painting in which it is represented." And the subject was one which altogether would have excited much curious and useful speculation, had it not been that it was never broached, without being met with the answer, that it was a mere phantom of the traveller's imagination.b Now, however, that its authenticity has been established, we trust it will not be overlooked. To trace the harp, which so clearly appears to have been an instrument of the Scythians throughout their various migrations and progress, back to their first connection with Egypt, and the establishment of the first Scythic Empire-the very dawn of history itself--would form an investigation equally interesting and instructive.

a

We believe the Druidical hierarchy to have been but of very short duration. That it existed in Britain, there can be no doubt, as Cæsar himselfe expressly says, that the Druids of Gaul derived their first instructions from those of Britain; but beyond that,-whether, as asserted by

a Vol. i. p. 225.

"See Walker's Irish Bards, Appendix, p. 114; Jones' Welsh Bards, p. 114.

Cæsar, De Bell. Gall., lib. vi. c. 13.

Mr Pinkerton, it was confined to Anglesey, the Isle of Man, and the Garonne, or the Southern bounds of Celtica in Gaul, and never found its way either into Ireland or Caledonia, is a question into which we shall not here enter. Divines-philosophers-legislators-physicianspoets-seers and musicians-the most extraordinary part of their history seems to have been the multiplicity of functions which their office embraced; and when the harp, as we have above noticed, fell from their hands into those of the bards, it would appear to have descended to an order of men little less distinguished for the variety of their attainments:

66

Musician, Herald, Bard, thrice may'st thou be renowned,

And with three several wreaths immortally be crowned."

With such superhuman versatility as was here called into requisition, it is not surprising to learn, that the office should afterwards be subdivided and parcelled out into the separate vocations of poets, heralds, and musicians, and that these again should latterly subside into a series of different gradations, from the Invested Bard, down to the juggler, the crowder, and the tabourer. This branching out of the original profession of the bards, no doubt, foretells of the period of their decay,-and while in Wales the ruthless policy of Edward I., and the stern edicts of several of his successors, precipitated their downfall-in Ireland and Scotland the decline of the feudal system equally served to annihilate their independence, and to determine their fate.

We shall say nothing in detail as to the Cambro-British race of bards, some of whom, such as Aneurin and Llywarch-Hên, appear to have been warriors as well as poets and musicians, and to have borne a prominent part in their country's sanguinary struggles with the Saxons during the fifth and sixth centuries. The accounts which have been

Pinkerton's Enquiry, vol. i. p. 17.

b Amongst these was the celebrated Myrddin ap Morvyrn, or Merlin of Caledonia, a disciple of Taliesen, who was born about the beginning of the sixth century near Dunkeld in Scotland. Whether Aneurin, the author of the Gododin, was also a native of this country, we are not aware; but he lived under the patronage of one of the northern princes, Mynyddawg, of Edinburgh. Jones' Welsh Bards, pp. 16, 23.

handed down to us regarding these personages, and their own poetical remains, are so intermingled with the fabulous feats and gestes of their romantic contemporaries, Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, equally famed in song, and celebrated for their skill on the harp, that they can scarcely be considered as falling within the pale of authentic history. "The poets," (says Hollingshed,a) " used for invention sake to faine such dreaming fables for exercise of their stiles and wits: afterwards, through error and lacke of knowledge, they haue been taken with the ignorant for verie true and most assured histories."

In like manner, Ireland may, for several centuries during the middle ages, have been (compared with many other nations) the seat of learning and civilization-we cannot vouch for the truth of what has never yet been satisfactorily established-but we believe that it must have been eminent for its proficiency in the art of music, far beyond either Wales or Scotland. The fact is certain, that about the year 1100, one of the Welsh princes (Gruffudd ab Cynan) invited to Wales a number of Irish bards to assist in framing a new code of musical regulations for his Cambrian subjects, and Caradoc their historian has acknowledged the obligation which his countrymen owed to Ireland on this occasion.b Giraldus Cambrensis, another of their compatriots, towards the end of the twelfth century, writes of the Irish, that they were incomparably better instructed in music than any other nation which he had seen, and he had travelled over great part of Europe; although, he adds, that their attainments seemed to him to be confined entirely to their skill in instrumental music." Another testimony of their excellence in this department is to be found in Galileo's Dialogues on Ancient and Modern Music, first printed in 1582, (p. 143,) where, speaking of the harp as among

Chron.

Powell's History of Wales, pp. 115, 191.

Topog. Hib. c. 11, p. 739. "Præ omni natione quam vidimus incomparabiliter est instructa." “In musicis solum instrumentis commendabilem invenio gentis istius diligentiam.”—Ibid.

e This was the father of Galileo the famous astronomer. Even the great Lord Bacon, in his Sylva Sylvarum, pays the Irish the compliment of saying that "no harpe hath the sound so melting and so prolonged as the Irish harpe."

the instruments which were at that time in use in Italy, he says- "This very ancient instrument was brought to us from Ireland, as Dante has recorded, (this must have been about the year 1300,) where they are excellently made, and in great numbers, and the inhabitants of which island have practised on it for very many centuries; it being also the particular badge of the kingdom, and as such frequently painted and sculptured on their public edifices and coins."a

With these unexceptionable and thoroughly accredited proofs of their ancient superiority, the Irish, we think, ought to rest satisfied, and not to advance claims for which they can produce no proper authority. That the harp was known to the ancient Britons we have already seen; and yet the Irish historians insist that they were the first to make the Welsh acquainted with the instrument; and in support of this notion, they found upon what may at once be seen to be a palpable, though no doubt an unintentional, misinterpretation, by Wynne, of a passage in which Dr Powell, in his notes on Caradoc's history, speaks of the introduction into Wales of the Irish music and musicians by Prince Gruffudd, to which we have just now referred, and where, by confounding the expression "instrumental music" with "musical instruments," it has been made to appear as if Powell had asserted that the harp was upon that occasion imported into Wales from Ireland. They also say that the word "Telyn" (the Welsh name for harp) is derived from the Irish "Teadhloin," and has no radical etymon to which it can be traced in the Welsh; an argument at no time very conclusive, but least of all in the case of cognate tongues so nearly allied as those of Ireland and Wales. Upon no better grounds than the above, the Welsh are likewise accused of having borrowed or stolen from the Irish their old favour

2

The figures on the Irish coins are said, by the best informed antiquaries, to have been triangles, not harps. Dr Ledwich says, that they were introduced simply to express the attachment of their monarchs to the Church, and its reciprocal support of them. It was Henry VIII. who first gave the Irish the Harp for their armorial bearing, to perpetuate, it is said, the celebrity of their performance on it in former times.

b Walker's Memoirs, pp. 70, 74.

c

Wynne's History of Wales, (Edit. 1774,) p. 159.

d The Welsh, again, derive the word " Telyn" from a Cambro-British root "Tel," signifying