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Bunting - The Ancient Music of Ireland, Volume 1, Issue 1, Page 63

Bunting - The Ancient Music of Ireland, Volume 1, Issue 1, Page 63
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periodical Publisher
Hodges & Smith, Dublin, 1840
periodical Editor
Edward Bunting
periodical Title
Bunting - The Ancient Music of Ireland
volume Number
1
issue Content
ANCIENT MUSIC OF IRELAND. 51forearm, and before it had acquired, its perfect triangular form by the incorporation of thesounding chauTher with the other upright.But, to return to the more immediate subject of inquiry.There being two descriptionsof harp in use iii the eleventh century, the one a rude and apparently quadrilateral instrumentin the hands of a naked performer, the other a perfectlY formed harp in those of a richlydressed individual, it might l)e surmised that we had lien the (ilarseach and Gruit accuratelydistinguished ; but so far as the writer can observe, the word Glarseacli is rather a modernsynorivme fbr ( mit, than an original specific name for the harp, as distinguished from thatinstrument. (fruit is the word commonly em 1 )loyed to designate the harp in our annals, andeven in modern compositions. Thus Keating, the historian, addressing Thadeus OCoffey,a Celcbrate(l performer on the harp, who lived about the beginning of the seventeenth century,when the (ruit, if ever it was different from the harp in Ireland, was forgotten, asks,Cia (lfl uoi le cinn ip an pu1r ?1 e iilOCr(ql rieim flU(tt luirt 1 ie O1hiCCO) urbiiiii C COla iflap ppui binn 1 o ap op wu ?Who is the artist by whom the harp (cruit) is played f by whom the anguish of theenvenomed spears recent wound is healed, through the sweetvoiced sound of the soundinghoard, (cZar,) like the sweet streamed peal of the organ ? &c.hence it will be necessary to guard also against interpreting (Jruit and Gruitir asapplying only to an inferior description of harp and harper ; for, as the names Giarseachand Clarseaclutir seem to have come into use in Irish writings long subsequent to the age ofCambrensis, we are left to conduct any further speculations, as to the form and compass ofthe Irish harp, on the evidence only of such mention of it, and its professors, as occurs inthe annals and ecclesiastical writings under the former names, or those of Githara andGitharista.Cambrensis states that the Northumbrians of his time sung in two parts, a fact alsoremarked by Beda ; and these Northiumbrians, it is well known from the latter authority,had been converted to Christianity by Irish monks, under the rule of Colman, a disciple ofthe Monastery of Bangor, in the county of Down. Now, Colman, the christianizer of theNorthumbrians, and subsequently the founder of the College of Mayo of the Saxons, wasthe immediate predecessor of Columbanus, whose regula c nobialis, or rule for conventual
issue Number
1
page Number
63
periodical Author
Edward Bunting
issue Publication Date
1840-01-01T00:00:00
allowedRoles
anonymous,guest,friend,member

Bunting - The Ancient Music of Ireland

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