However Buckley's "oblique lyre" is not a type generally recognised in wider organology, and I suggest that her Irish examples (e.g. Although it is possible that detailed study could draw out workable instruments from these pictures, I am tempted to regard these as generic biblical instruments, copied and recopied from older exemplars, and not intended to depict actual contemporary instruments. There is also a large number of depictions, in Ireland, Scotland and abroad, of King David playing a vaguely drawn and organologically improbable rectangular chordophone.
The Cotton Psalter(above) and the Durrow East stone (shown here) would be "with one curved and one straight arm". The Clonmacnoise carving shown above would be the "round topped" type, familiar from illustrations such as the Vespasian Psalter, and actual examples such as that from Sutton Hoo The usual explaination of the origin of the idea of using a bow on a stringed instrument is that it came to Europe along with the rebec (rabab) from the Arabic world in the eleventh century.Īnn Buckley, who has published most on the musical isntruments depicted in early Irish stone carvings, describes three types: "(i) with one curved and one straight arm (ii) round topped and (iii) oblique" (see for example Music in Ireland to c.1500, being chapter 21 of "A New History of Ireland, Volume I" ed. Finan's church, Lough Currane, Waterville, co. There is a single Irish depiction of a bowed lyre, a 12th century stone carving at St. It often acquired a fingerboard between the two arms to allow fretting of the strings, although fretting is still possible without a fingerboard as in the case of the Karelian and other Baltic examples. The bowed lyre was used from the eleventh century onwards in Wales ( crwth) and England (crowd), and elsewhere in Europe. Lyres would be plucked or strummed with the fingernails or a plectrum, and from at least as early as the eleventh century they were bowed just like a fiddle (See Mary Remnant, "English Bowed Instruments from Anglo-Saxon to Tudor Times", Clarendon Press, 1986). It is usually assumed that these continental instruments were strung with hair or gut, in contrast to the metal wire of the Irish instruments. the remains from Sutton Hoo and Prittlewell. There are even some surviving remains of instruments from the 6th and 7th centuries, found in royal burials in England and on the continent, e.g. This type of lyre is relatively well known at this early period from many parts of northern Europe.
These instruments are not harps they have a flat soundbox with a bridge and tailpiece to hold the strings, like on a fiddle, but instead of the fiddle's neck and fingerboard they have two arms holding a yoke which supports the strings. Many of the stones show various type of lyre, e.g the one shown here from Clonmacnoise. The manuscript line drawing includes a lot more detail than is preserved on the eroded stone carvings, so it can be instructive to compare the Cotton Psalter lyre drawing with a similarly shaped one from the Durrow East stone. There is one early medieval manuscript from Ireland showing a stringed instrument, the early 10th century Cotton Psalter (BL ms Cot.Vit. Alasdair Ross discusses the possibility that all the Scottish (and by implication the Irish) figures were copied from foreign drawings and not from life, in 'Harps of Their Owne Sorte'? A Reassessment of Pictish Chordophone Depictions "Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies" 36, Winter 1998.ĥ. For more information see my web pages on Gaelic harp stringing practice.Ĥ. this book contains the original texts and English translations of a huge number of textual sources.ģ.
"Drama and the Performing Arts in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland: A Repertory of Sources and Documents from the Earliest Times until c.1642",ĭ. Ann Buckley, Music in Ireland to c.1500, being chapter 21 of "A New History of Ireland, Volume I" ed.
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