Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/152

138 we find the number of instruments to have been nearly doubled ill the course of four centuries, and their forms during this period had continually varied.

The flute is the most ancient of all instruments of music, and in the Middle Ages was found in many varieties. Among these was the double flute of the classic form having two stems.



The stem held in the left hand (sinistra) was for the high notes, and that held in the right hand (dextra) for the low notes. The two stems were sometimes held together, sometimes separate.

About the year 951, Bishop Elfega caused to be made for his church at Winchester an organ which, in size and construction, surpassed any that had hitherto been seen.



This organ was divided into two parts, each having its bellows, its key-board, and its player; twelve bellows above and fourteen below were set in motion by sixty-six strong men, and the wind was passed along forty valves into four hundred pipes, arranged in groups of ten, and to each of these groups corresponded one of the twenty-four keys of each keyboard. In spite of the great size of this organ, we can hardly believe that its sound was heard over the whole town (undique perurbem), as we are told by a contemporary poet.

The syrinx, which was, in fact, the Pandean pipes, was composed usually of seven tubes of unequal length, forming a straight line at the top, for the mouth of the player.

Trumpets were much in use among the Saxons, and were employed in the chase and in the tourney, as well as in sounding the charge in battle. They were also used at feasts, public assemblies, and as signals by which one man could communicate with another at a distance beyond the reach of the voice.

The lyre, which was the principal stringed instrument of the Greeks and the Romans, preserved its primitive form until the tenth century. The number of cords varied from three to eight. the lyre of the North—which was unquestionably the origin of the violin, and which already presented the shape of that instrument—had a bridge in the middle of the sound-board.

The psalterium, which must not be confounded with the psalterion of the thirteenth century, was a little portable harp, played either with one or both hands. After the fifth century its shape varied, and was sometimes square or triangular, and sometimes round. In the tenth century the psalterium gave place to the cithar, a name by which various stringed instruments had at first been vaguely described.

The Saxon harp was at first only a triangular cithar. Although some antiquaries have pretended to have discovered the harp among the records of Grecian, Roman, and Egyptian antiquity, there can be little doubt that its origin must be referred to the people of the North. The Gaelic etymology of the word harp may be taken as a proof of this.

The Saxon harp of the ninth century appears to have changed little from the modern instrument of that in time, and the simplicity and elegance of its form had arrived nearly at perfection. The Saxon glee-men usually sang to the harp, and this instrument was also in common use among persons who did not follow the profession of minstrels. Bede tills us that, as early as the seventh century, it was customary at convivial meetings to hand a harp from one