The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-04-28 00:00:00

THE HARP.

In its infant state poetry has been seldom separated from
music; and it is probable that most of the stanza.* cited by the •
annalists were meant originally to be associated with song.—
Of some of the juvenile works of St. Columbanus, we are told
that they were "worthy of being sung;" and a scene• brdught
vividly, in a few words, before 9ur eyes, by the Irish biographer
of • Columba, represents that man as sitting, along with his
brethreti,upon the banks of the beautiful lake Kee, while among
them was a poet skilled, we are told, in modulating song to
verse "after the manner of his art." That it was to the accom-
paniment of a stringed instrument, called the cruit, they per-
tormed'those songs or chants, appears to be the most general
opinion. 1.0, some ilistichs on the death of Columba, preserved
in the annals of the Four Masters, we find mention of this kind
of hatpin rather a touching passage : Like a song of the
cruet without joy, 'is the sound which follows our master to the.
tomb;" and its comrhon use in the eighth century as an accom-
paniment to the voice, may be implied from Bede's account of
the religious poet Ceadmon, who, in order to avoid taking a
part in the light songs of society, always rose, he tells us, from
the table when the harp was sent round, and it came to his
turn to sing and play. The Italians, who are known to hale
been in possession of the harp before the time of Dante, are,
by a learned musician of their own country, Galilei, said to
have derived it from Ireland; the instrument, according to his,
account, being no other than a cithera with many strings, and
having, at the time when he wrote, four octaves and a tone in
compass. How little music, though powerful in its influence on
the feelings, either springs from, or is dependent upon, intel-
lect, appears from the fact, that some of the most exquisite
effusions of this art have had their origin among the simplest
and most uncultivated people; nor can all that taste and science
bring afterwards to the task do more, in general, than diversify,
by new combinations, those first wild strains of gaiety or pas-
sion into which nature had infused her original inspiration. In
Greece the sweetness of the ancient music had already been lost,
when all the other arts were but on their way to perfection; and
from the accounts given by Giraldus Uambrensus of the rish
harpers of the twelfth century, it may be inferred that the me-
lodies of the countries, at the earlier period of which we are
speaking, were in some degree like the first music of the infant.
age of Greece, and partook of the fieshness of that morning of
mind and hope which was then awakening around them.—
With respect to the structure of the ancient Irish harp, there
does not appear to have been anything accurately ascertained;
but, from the retentiveness of all belonging to the past which
we have shown to have characterised this people, it appears
most probable that their favourite instrument was kept sacredly
unaltered, and remained the same, perhaps, in latter times,
when it charmed the cars of English poets and philosophers, as
when it had been modulated by the Lard Cronan, iu the- sixth
century, upon the banks of the lake Kee.—Moore's Ireland.