charms of instrumental music; and though some, like Midas, remained true to the older form of instrument, the very reeds conspired together to announce to the world, "Midas hath ass's ears," and when Orpheus arose, the very rocks and woods, beasts of the field, and birds of the air, were powerless to resist his song accompanied by the perfected lyre; nevertheless, the pipe has not even yet quite lost its power, for to the present day the dreaded cobra is called from his hole and made to dance to the music of the Indian pipe; and children, even as in the days of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, will swarm at the heels of the travelling performer on the bagpipe; though the rats have grown wiser, warned perhaps by the tradition handed down by their graybeards, of the fate of their brethren; and like the deaf adder, they refuse to hear "the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely."

Of the myth of Orpheus I purpose to treat in another chapter, for it is inseparable from the lyre, which ushers in the third great step in the musical history of the ancient world. Suffice it here to say, that there still remain Arcadias, where dusky beauties dance to the sound of the primitive syrinx of Pan, or to that singular variety, the nose flute, and where Orpheus and his lyre are all unknown, for the lyre would seem to have been confined to the Eastern hemisphere, and not to have penetrated to America and the Oceanic Isles until introduced by Europeans; and stringed instruments are still wanting in many groups of the Pacific Islands. It seems strange that the civilized Mexicans and Peruvians should not have possessed stringed instruments, especially as they had so many other things in common with China and Japan; and we cannot help thinking it probable that some sort of lute or harp will be found to have been in use among them, although they seem to have given the preference to instruments of percussion, and to those of the inflatile type. Catlin mentions lutes as in use among the North American Indians; but Mr. Rowbotham refuses to believe in the existence of that which would rather militate against

his theory of the succession of musical instruments, and which affirms that should one of the three kinds be rejected, it is always the drum or the flute, and never the lyre. It is, however, certain, that hitherto stringed instruments have not been found among the ancient relics of America, although Engel tells us that the Peruvians had a lyre of five or seven strings.

NOTE. In the Journal of the Anthropological Institute for November 1890 is an interesting article upon the old British "Pibcorn," or "Hornpipe," compared with hornpipes and bagpipes from the Grecian Archipelago, Arab reed-pipes, Deckhan pipes and Hindoo hornpipes, giving illustrations of these instruments, and quotations from Chaucer, Spenser, and other early poets, showing the ancient use of the pibcorn, cornpipe, or hornpipe, in Great Britain.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PRIMITIVE INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC.

III. THE LYRE.

Traditional Origin of the Lyre-The Tortoise in Asia and America -The Search for Osiris-Transferred to Orpheus-Same Myth in Mexico and Peru-The Lyre in South and West Africa-The Bent Bow the Precursor of the Harp-Egyptian and Assyrian Harps-Old Irish Harp-Semitic Lyre-The Lyre of Apollo-The Shell of the Tortoise imitated in Gourds

The Plectrum in the East-The Vina, or Bina-Strings of the Lyre vary in Number-Pythagorean Lyre-The_Three Measures-The Story of Orpheus-Introduced into Britain by the Romans-Tesselated Pavements-Diodorus Siculus and Stonehenge-Sun Dances-Merlin and Amphion-Aldhelm and his Harp-Nero-Troubadours.

"Now strike the golden lyre again,

A louder yet, and yet a louder strain;
Break his bands of sleep asunder,

And rouse him like a rattling peal of thunder."

IN these lines Dryden commemorates the effect of the music of Timotheus upon Alexander the Great, as recounted by Dion Chrysostom, Plutarch, and others; for that monarch seems to have been peculiarly susceptible to the charms of music; and Rollin relates that "Antigenides the flutenist, at a banquet, fired that prince in such a manner, that, rising from the table like one out of his senses, he catched up his arms, and clashing them to the sound of the flute, was almost ready to charge the guests." But Timotheus, the great poet and musician of the court of Philip of Macedon, could hardly have influenced Alexander, since he died

about the time of the birth of that monarch; he was however, celebrated as the perfecter of the lyre, to which he added our strings.

The mythical history of this instrument, and the Power attributed to it, is both curious and interesting. We are told that Hermes, the Prime Minister of Osiris, walking on the banks of the Nile after the inundation, struck his foot against a lead tortoise, dessicated by the sun, and retaining only the sinews and cartilages, which, braced and contracted by the heat, became sonorous, and emitted a musical sound when struck, suggesting to him the idea of forming a musical instrument of the same materials. This legend, somewhat altered, appears in the tale of Homer, the invention being assigned by him to the Greek Mercury; who, having stolen some bulls from Apollo, and hidden them in a cave, and having there found a tortoise and perhaps eaten it, amused himself by stretching across the shell thongs from the hides of the bulls he had stolen, and having thus discovered the musical properties of cords thus stretched over a resonant shell, improved the instrument by adding to it the horns of the bulls, and afterwards presented the lyre thus formed to Apollo, as a peace-offering and indemnification for the theft he had

committed.

The early lyre certainly consisted of the shell of a tortoise, and the twisted horns of an antelope, with a piece of wood inserted between them, to which the strings were fastened; and so much importance was attached to the use of the tortoise-shell, that when wood was substituted for it, the wood was carved to represent the shell. This use of the shell of the tortoise is significant, for the tortoise is a sacred animal, both in the Eastern and Western hemispheres; and is not only connected with the flood legends of America, but Tezcatlipoca, the Mexican god of music, who ranked next to the Supreme Deity, is said to have brought music from heaven on a bridge of whales and turtles; and although this could scarcely have had any reference to the lyre, which was apparently unknown in Mexico,

the myth is peculiarly interesting from the traces which are found, both there and in Peru, of that widely-spread legend concerning the search for the body of Osiris, which in Greece was transferred to Orpheus, and which is thus alluded to by Milton

"What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal Nature did lament,

When by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,

Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?"1

In Mexico, the search was for the body of Quetzalcoatl ; in Peru, for one of the Incas; but the myth is evidently the same in origin, and like the various Deluge legends must have been derived from some common source.

Doubtless stringed instruments may have been invented in many different places independently; and in fact there are many known, which would seem to have no connection with the traditional lyre. The most simple of these is one found in South and West Africa, which consists of a bow, tightly strung with a sinew from the back of some wild animal of the goat or deer kind, to one end of which is tied a hollow gourd, which acts as a sounding-board. On the West Coast of Africa the gourd is sometimes replaced by a human skull, doubtless the ghastly record of some slaughtered enemy. This rude instrument would seem to be the precursor of the harp, which, perhaps of all musical instruments, is that which has passed through the greatest variety of form, as may be seen by a reference to the Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures and paintings. In most of these, especially in Egypt, the form of the bent bow is distinctly traceable, and it is a curious fact that in very many of them a human head adorns one of the ends, which ornament was also conspicuous on the old Irish harp, being probably a survival from a time when the harp was simply a strung bow with the skull of a slaughtered enemy as a sounding-board, like that of West Africa.

1 Lycidas.