Page:The Early English Organ Builders and their work.djvu/40

 side of the quire, being never played upon but when the four doctors of the Church were read, viz., Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory and Jerome, being a pair of fair large organs, called the Cryers. The third pair were daily used at ordinary service."

This being the first time the expression "a pair of organs" has occurred, I may as well explain that it meant simply an organ with more pipes than one. Johnson, Heywood, and other of the old writers, always use the term pair in the sense of an aggregate, and as synonymous with set; thus we have "a pair of beads," "a pair of cards," "a pair of chessmen," "a pair of organs." When speaking of a flight of stars we often say a pair of stars. We also have "a pair of steps"; so this ancient form of expression, although obsolete in most cases, is still in use at the present day.

This old expression has been a source of great vexation to archæologists, as well as to musical writers. Albert Way thought that the term had reference to the "double bellows." Douce, that it referred to an