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a fossil tooth suggested the form, through all the minute details of construction, of an extinct species of animals. The modern discoveries of geographers, archæologists, ethnologists, and philologers have served to disclose some of the hidden treasures of the past--the migrations, conquests, and defeats of the successive swarms of Celts, Iberians, Teutons, Scandinavians, and Sclaves. Indeed, as has been well observed, "the hills, the valleys, and the rivers are writing tablets on

QUERIES:-Colonel John Vernon, 147- Aphorisms
Buns-Campbell's "Hohenlinden -Fitzralph Brass-
Harvest Home -H. L. W.-Key.cold: Key: Quay-Mor- which the nations of olden times have inscribed

ris-Dance Nointed Petting Stone-The Protesting Bishops-Arms of Prouy-Quotation wanted "Sawney's Mistake"- Family of Serle, 148.

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QUERIES WITH ANSWERS: Ste. Ampoule - M. de Lamoignon's Library T. K. Hervey - Playing Cards Richard Corbet-"Songe d'un Anglais ""A Vision," &c.-"Venella," 149.

REPLIES:- Rev. John Wolcot, M.D., alias Peter Pindar, Esq., 151-Immersion in Holy Baptism, 152-Brignoles, Ib. Earl St. Vincent, 153 - Parc-aux-Cerfs, Ib.-Assumption of a Mother's Name, 154-"Albumazar" Henry Alken, Artist - The Late Rev. R. H. Barham Classic-Campbell's "Hohenlinden"-Smith Queries Dundrennan Abbey-Family of Fisher, Roxburghshire -"Leo pugnat cum Dracone"-Lines on the Eucharist Mrs. Lawrence, of Liverpool - Needle's Eye - Courts of Queen's Bench and Exchequer-"Excelsior:" Excelsius- Quotations wanted - Marquis D'Aytoneon Crooked Staff "The Three Pigeons" · Battle of Baugé Quarter-Masters, &c., 155. Notes on Books, &c.

Nates.

Married

BY WHOM WAS THE HARP BROUGHT INTO EUROPE? THE IRISH HARP.

The reply of SP.* to the query-"By whom was the harp brought into Europe? not the lyre of the Greeks, but the great triangularshaped harp, as used by the Irish and Welsh, and as seen on the monuments of Egypt and Assyria "t-does not appear to apply to the "drift of the query;" indeed, my conviction is that, evidence as it undoubtedly is of the biblical research and ingenious speculations of the writer, he has drifted far and widely away from it. From his conclusions I am forced to dissent, for my experience has taught me to have some faith that the aids which inquiries such as the query is calculated to stimulate, are not only "pleasing exertions of ingenuity, and to a certain extent useful,” but that they also "worm out," with occasional reliability," the secrets of the speechless past." Hooke had a faith vital enough to animate him with the hope of being able " to raise a chronology from the mere study of broken and fossiled shells," and to identify the intervals of time wherein such catastrophes and mutations as have been noted have happened, and the illustrious author of Cosmos accepted the assurance as of probable accomplishment. (Bohn's edition, p. 6.) To Cuvier

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their records."

With the aids of such lights as the traditions and antiquities of Ireland, the testimony of externs, and the deductions from accepted facts supply, I venture to offer some remarks elucidatory, if not quite satisfactory, in reply to the query.

The first mention of the harp yet found in Irish MSS. is in the "Dinn Seanchas" compiled by Amergin Mac Amalgaid, A.D. 544. It is there related that in the time of Geide, monarch of Ireland, A.M. 3143, "the people deemed each other's voices sweeter than the warblings of a melodious harp, such peace and concord reigned among them." In the earliest Irish records, some of which are transcribed in the Books of Leacan and Ballymote, a very remote antiquity is claimed for the Irish harp. Some writers have concluded that there is indeed a probability that it is indigenous, and from the most early period in common use among the Irish, Britons, Gauls, and ancient Germans, and all the "ubiquitous" Celtic nations. (Walker's Irish Bards, Appendix, p. 115, 4to, Lond. 1786; Leslie's Races of Scotland, p. 448, It was also well known 8vo, Edinb. 1866.) throughout Asia, and is thought to be the earliest musical instrument with which man was acquainted. It has been found on sculptured stones in these islands, and on a monument in Brittany described by Penhouet in the Archæologie Armoricaine.

A legend of the invention of the Irish harp is given in an Irish romance, "The Introduction to Tain-Bo-Cuailgne," Cattle Prey of Coolney-a copy of which, written in the twelfth century, exists, supposed to have been transcribed from a book of the seventh century.

The tracts referred to above in the Books of Leacan and Ballymote report that the harp was brought into Ireland by the Tuatha-de-Danaans, A.M. 2539, a people learned in the arts and sciences, who occupied the island before the arrival of the Milesians, a kindred people who, through devious wanderings, had reached Egypt, and there sojourned contemporaneously with the Israelites, and had arrived in that country in their migrations from the north-east, or Scythia, the cradle of the race. Gildas, Nennius, Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, the earliest of British chroniclers, and several other authors record these facts, and quote them expressly from the Irish annals. These

pretentions to so old an origin, and to a civilisation so advanced, of the ancient Irish, were for many ages deemed absurd and visionary. The study of ethnology, philology, and geographical nomenclatures, national customs and folk-lore, have contributed to bring these claims within the pale of historical recognition.

Baxter, Lhuyd, Chalmers, Whitaker, Skene, Robertson, Garnett, Davies, Pritchard, Betham, Williams, Latham, Zeuss, Taylor, and other scholars, have, with their industrious explorations in the rich soil of a productive field, educed evidences on which reliance may be placed, and have tracked the wanderings of the ubiquitous Gael; have proved that large portions of Spain were anciently Gaelic; have identified the limits of the Gaelic region in Italy; have followed in the footsteps of the Gael along the Alps, and gave to them the name; and have recognised the settlements of the scattered clans, who, retracing their path, fixed their abode in Asia Minor, and gave a patronymic name to the district-Galatia, or the land of the Gael. And there they long retained their language and ethnical peculiarities. (Jerome, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, Promium; Taylor's Words and Places, p. 234.) Evidences of the relations of Ireland with Africa are cropping daily to the surface, and the old and widelyspread traditions of the "blessed isles of the west which mingle with the earliest details of the historic period may yet be vindicated as the mythic reliques of a primitive religion and a prehistoric civilisation.

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Ireland has been in possession of the triangular-shaped harp from time immemorial. The senachies (chroniclers) record that three harpers accompanied the Tuatha-de-Danaans to Ireland (A.M. 2539), and their conquerors, the Milesians; and that their conquerors, the Milesians (A.M. 2736, Keating), were accompanied by harpers. Keating relates that Miled, the father of the princes who led this colony, had sent twelve young men to learn the principal arts and sciences of Egypt; that each of them became expert in his own particular profession by the end of the seven years they had resided in the land of the Pharaohs. (Hist. of Ireland, p. 177. O'Mahony's.) Whatever may be the value of this testimony, it is generally admitted that the harp is the first musical instrument with which man has been acquainted. In the fourth chapter of Genesis the invention of it is appropriated to the antediluvian era. Bruce discovered the triangular-shaped harp painted in a tomb called Bibán el Molook, near the pyramid of Gizeh, in which the remains of kings of Egypt were deposited. The harp was not known to the early Greeks. Their stringed instruments as well as their letters were introduced from Asia, the cradle-land of the Gael. The cithara, says Plutarch (De Musica), was originally

styled Asiatic. Heraclides of Lesbos supposed it to have been invented by Amphion (Plut. De Musica). Trepander, two hundred years after Homer, was the first who became eminent as a harper. Timotheus of Miletus, about four hundred years B.C., added four to the seven strings previously in use. According to Athenæus, Sophocles calls it a Phrygian instrument. The mythological tradition pointed to an Egyptian origin, representing Mercury as having found the tortoise, from the shell of which he framed the first cithara, among the mud of the subsiding Nile. All authors agree that the Irish harp is very different from any stringed instrument used among the Romans; and Fortunatus (lib. vii. carm. 8) mentions it as an instrument of the barbarians. Long before the lyre was known in Rome or Greece, the Gael of Ireland had attained a high degree of perfection in the form and management of the harp. The Irish harper made use of two kinds of instruments-the cruit and the clairseach. The latter is supposed to have been employed in producing martial strains, and used in banquethalls; the former thrilled from its chords the softer breathings of love and sorrow. The pagan Gael would listen to no instruction of Druid and Ollav (priest and professor) that was not wedded to verse; their systems of physics and metaphysics, the precepts of their religion and their laws, were enshrined in poetical compositions set to music, and so conveyed and preserved from generation to generation; and thus the art and science of music were not only religiously cultivated by them, but were at all times esteemed the most polite branches of education; and even when the Christian dispensation had supplanted Druidism, they continued to be in equal repute. In rank, the minstrels were the coequals of the nobles, and at the festive boards to them were assigned seats of the highest honour; extensive land estates were settled upon them; many of them as late as the seventeenth century occupied stately castles. The legal records of that period show that the annual rental of one of this class was equivalent to 50001. of our present money. Their persons and properties were held inviolable by all classes; the eric or compensation, levied under the brehon-law, for the killing of a chief professor was next in amount to that exacted for a prince or a king.

The Gael, as well as the Egyptains, must have paid great attention to the study of music, for each arrived at a very accurate knowledge of the art; had it not been so they could never have possessed such scientifically constructed instruments, nor have acquired so perfect an acquaintance with the principles of harmony. Music, like every science, as has been judiciously remarked, has its regular gradations of progression from infancy to maturity; and while improve

ment follows improvement, the powers of the human mind must be stimulated and enlarged, and an exalted order of intellect attained. Beauford, no mean authority, opines that the Irish harp has the true musical figure, and that the Irish bards in particular seem, from experience and from practice, to have discovered a form found to have been constructed on true harmonic principles, challenging the strictest mathematical and philosophical scrutiny. (Walker's Irish Bards, Appendix 117, 4to. Lond. 1786.) He considers, judging from the form of the Egyptian harp as given by Bruce (since then confirmed by Denon and Roscellini), that the endeavours of the Egyptian artists were ineffectual to discover the true form such as the Irish had; "for," he adds, "no system of musical strings whose diameters are equal can be tended on the given curve." (Ibid. App. p. 119.)

Many writers have denied the antiquity and early civilisation claimed for Ireland, but it has never been questioned that in the most remote times the Irish had a national music peculiar to themselves, and that their bards and harpers were eminent in its performance, and were admittedly the best musicians in Europe. Giraldus Cambrensis, who had been sent to Ireland by Henry II. with his son John, prejudiced as he undoubtedly was, highly commends the Irish music, and says: "In their musical instruments alone do I find any laudable industry among the people, in these they are incomparably skilful, beyond all other nations;" and he then remarks, that "both Scotland and Wales strive to rival Ireland in the art of music the former from its community of race, the latter from its antiquity." (Topography of Ireland, b. iii. c. 11.) The writer does not note what, from its proximity to his time, must have been known to him, that towards the close of the preceding century (about A.D. 1098) Griffith ap Conan, King of North Wales, born in Ireland, and descended by his mother's side from Irish parents, brought with him from the land of his birth "several skilful musicians that devised in manner almost all the instruments which were afterwards played in Wales, chiefly the harp or crowth (cruith), and the music that is there used, and which he was the first to bring over into Wales." (Caradoc of Llancarvan, Chronicle of Wales, p. 147, printed at Shrewsbury.) Wharton (Hist. of English Music) says that "as late as the eleventh century the practice continued among the Welsh bards of receiving instruction in the bardic profession from Ireland."

The Italians were in possession of the harp before the time of Dante. Galilei the elder, writing about the middle of the sixteenth century, records the fact: "This most ancient instrument was brought to us from Ireland, as Dante, born 1205, testifies, where they (the harps) are excel

lently made, and in great repute, the inhabitants of that island having practised upon it for many, many ages."

Several learned men, observes M. Guigene, are of opinion that the Europeans are not indebted to the Egyptians for the harp; and he adds the singular surmise that it originated in the North, and was introduced into England, and subsequently into Ireland, by the Saxons. It is only in the dark days of Ireland's depression such a bold assertion could be hazarded, when ages of intestine convulsion had all but extinguished her literature and eclipsed her olden fame. In days when it ceased to be known that Irish armies occupied a considerable portion of England. (ide Ethelwerd's Chronicle, A.D. 444; Annales Saxonici, 603; Gildas, sect. 14.) When the Irish fleets swept her shores; when Scotland was in her grasp; when the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, the Orkneys, Iceland, and the Faroe Isles were subject to her sway. (Dicuil, Liber de Mensura Orbis, circa 825; Hardy's Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to Hist. of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. i. part ii. p. 500); and when her conquests extended from Armorica to the foot of the Alps. (Keating's Ireland, edited by O'Mahony, New York, pp. 188, 395.) The only property the Saxon could have had in the harp was its Teutonic name, which the Gael never adopted. The instrument itself he received from Ireland, as he did his letters. (Yeowell's Ancient British Church, p. 148.) That it was of Irish origin the Norman kings admitted, for when they coined money for Ireland they impressed it with the harp as the national emblem. I hope I am justified in concluding that the probabilities are corroborative of these deductions that to Ireland the harp is indigenous, and from an early period in use among the Irish, the Gauls, the ancient Germans, and all the Celtic nations; that in the remote past the Africans and the Gael were not strangers to each other; that it is as reasonable to assume that the Gael took their harp to Egypt as that they brought it from it. One assertion I hesitate not to make, that the Gael or Celt spread widely over the western parts of the old world, north and south, and bore with them civilisation and arts anterior to those of Greece; and that during the social convulsions that revolutionised the continent, Ireland-the far isle of the west, remote from war and its disturbing influences-was the refuge, asylum, school, and stronghold of the kindred clans; and that in that "sacred isle " is now to be found the larger portion of what survives of the memorials of the race-its language, its institutions, its traditions, its laws, and its history. JOHN EUGENE O'CAVANAGH. Lime Cottage, Walworth.

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