Page:The Early English Organ Builders and their work.djvu/29

 Swithin," in which the description occurs, to Elphegus, Bishop of Winchester, by whose order the organ was erected, about the middle of the tenth century.

To quote the lengthy account left us by the good monk, and the absurd deductions that have been made from it would occupy more time than we could spare; suffice it to say that Mr. Wackerbarth, in his "Music and the Anglo-Saxons," states that he believes that it possessed registers or stops, and a key-board furnished with all the chromatic semi-tones! Mr. Arthur Ashpitel, a modern writer and archæologist, believes all this, and much more. He thinks it had "forty stops!" and after summing up his opinions, concludes with this remarkable passage:—"The instrument, therefore, would be the size of that