The Compass Rose, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring 2002

The study of music in medieval Ireland is anything but straightforward. Direct sources are few and far between and what is known must be derived by using creative detective work. However, the exploration is extremely rewarding because there is so much material that can be tapped into. This paper focuses on where that information can be found and demonstrates how creative thought can pull it out.

Literature offers an opportunity to explore the music of medieval Ireland in an often unsusual way. As Ann Buckley (1995:13-14) points out, "The narrative literature [of Ireland] abounds in allusion to musicians, instruments and occasions of music-making, and reveals a rich and detailed vocabulary to describe all manner of sounds."

Direct manuscripts focusing on the repertoire or techniques employed by musicians are non-existent. These details were probably lost because they were never written down, not because they were destroyed by time. As Buckley (1995:13) points out:

References are descriptive rather than analytical, and usually emotive, metaphorical - but rarely technical or systematic - their primary function being to counterpoint other matters: invoking a certain mood, social prestige, display of wealth, the proper ordering of society according to status, avoidance of taboos, maintenance of a Christian worldview of moral good and evil.

This idea of music being alluded to but not technically described suggests society was so familiar with music that no one needed to have direct descriptions. It seems logical to assume that the people of medieval Ireland would make assumptions that the people of the present day could not make.

Inferring from what we know of Irish secular music today, oral tradition played a very strong role in society. In Michael Richter's book entitled The Formation of the Medieval West, he takes a look at current Irish traditional music and story telling. He points out that in his experience, "The other message they [the storytellers] try to convey is that the material transmitted from generation to generation must not be reduced to 'mere' words. True, the spoken word is the distinguishing feature of the oral tradition, but it is fully integrated into a wider mesh of sounds, such as musical accompaniment or rhythmic beats . . . " (Richter 1994:95-96). Taking this thought further, Ann Buckley (1995:17) approaches medieval Irish music through what was written down from that oral tradition later and uses its colorful word painting and symbolism to get an idea of not only how important musical sound was in the society of that time, but also what conclusions can be drawn as to what kind of sounds they were making.

Also, Buckley (1995:24) takes the idea of simple sounds being music, defining music as "an aspect of civilization, a result of ordering and refinement of our own nature and that of the world around us, a process that is not entirely invented, or entirely natural in the sense of being instinctive, but represents a combination of the two." She uses them to string together her reference from the Annals of Ulster, which "describes the clapping of hands on St. Michael's feastday, to simulate the sounds of thunder associated with the Last Judgment" (Buckley 1995:29).

Irish mythology also reveals details of musical performance practice when viewed in the correct light. As Ann Buckley (1995:17) points out, " . . . whether we are dealing with pseudo-etymology or myths of origin of musical instruments, or with fairy musicians rather than actual historical figures, we learn terms of reference and acquire understanding of attitudes and associations, of appropriate and inappropriate behavior, through these exemplary or cautionary tales." Therefore, mythology gives another perspective on music and musical practice that is not directly associated with either.

One particular tale describes a number of questions posed to a number of poets who were guests of a king. In an attempt to outwit them, the king's brother asks several questions, including one about which was originated first, the cruit or the timpan. The response following includes the origin stories of each (Sayers 1986:368).

An example of a reference to music in verse comes from St. Cailin (Hennessy and Kelly 1875:93), whose Book of Fenagh, a book of old tales compiled in the fourteenth century, refers often to "the luck of minstrels." This is mentioned is conjunction with the "Luck of women; luck of clerics and churches;/ . . . luck of smiths." This alone suggests that musicians were as important to medieval Irish society as women, clerics, churches and smiths. Which are all things a medieval society needed to exist.

Girald Cambrensis, a Norman with an ecclesiastical background who was in the entourage of Henry II, gave a detailed account of music in medieval Ireland when he visited there and wrote his Topographia Hiberniae in 1185 AD (O'Meara 1982:11-12). Girald Cambrensis did not speak favorably of the Irish. Among other less than kind things, he accused them of being "so barbarous that they cannot be said to have any culture" (O'Meara 1982:101). He did, however, speak very highly of their musical ability:

They [the Irish] seem to be incomparably more skilled in [musical instruments] than any other people that I have seen. The movement is . . . rather quick and lively, while at the same time the melody is sweet and pleasant. It is remarkable how, in spite of the great speed of the fingers, the musical proportion is maintained. The melody is kept perfect and full with unimpaired art through everything - through quivering measures and the involved use of several instruments -with a rapidity that charms, a rhythmic pattern that is varied, and a concord achieved through elements discordant. They harmonize at intervals of the octave and the fifth, but they always begin with B flat and with B flat end, so that everything may be rounded with the sweetness of charming sonority. They glide so subtly from one mode to another, and the grace notes so freely sport with such abandon and bewitching charm around the steady tone of the heavier sound, that the perfection of their art seems to lie in their concealing it, as if "it were the better for being hidden. An art revealed brings shame." (O'Meara 1982:103-104)

Of musical instruments in medieval Ireland, Girald Cambrensis in his Topographia Hiberniae (written after his tour of Ireland in 1185 AD) said "Ireland uses and delights in two instruments only, the harp, namely, and the timpanum" (O'Meara 1982:104). A different translation of Topographia Hiberniae quotes the two instruments to be the cithara and the typanum (Rimmer 1969:29). Archaeological evidence proves there to be other instruments in Ireland at the time, including natural horns (Buckley 2000:172).¹ Wm. H. Grattan Flood (1905:22), in A History of Irish Music also suggests various forms of bagpipes, ancient flutes and oboes, however, since A History of Music was first published in 1905, much research has been done. Sources disagree on the role of horns and pipes in medieval society. Some suggest horns were not used musically but were instead used solely for war or hunting. They also suggest pipes were the musical instruments of the common class (De Paor and De Paor 1958:106-107). In summary, there have been a number of horns discovered in archaeological digging, but their purpose is unclear. Pictures of similar horns appear in stone and metalwork, but do not indicate what part of society they were used in. The medieval pipes were probably more similar to the Scottish bagpipe. Stonework images of pipers sometimes portray double or triple pipes (Joyce 1920:580-581).

The difference between the string instruments referred to by different scholars is sometimes sketchy at best. These instruments include: the harp, the cruit, the crot, and the timpan. The harp and the cruit are often seen used interchangeably. Modern sources suggest them to be two separate instruments. The cruit being a small instrument very similar to the lyre, and the harp being a larger framed instrument with more strings.² Both are plucked instruments, and though Grattan Flood suggests the cruit was played with a plectrum (Flood 1905:26), modern research disagrees with this theory (Buckley 2000:166). The crot is probably a more accurate interchangeable term for the harp. William Sayers (1986:372) points out, using etymology, that in examining the word crot as being derived from British Latin crotta, it translates as vault,

. . . (cf. Welsh croth "belly, uterus"), suggesting a bulbous shape for the lower part . . . By the period of our Irish manuscripts, however, crot was used metaphorically not of a belly-shaped object but of a "hump" or "hunch." Behind this, I [William Sayers] suggest, is the replacement of the lyre, with its concave soundbox or resonating behind the lower part of the strings, by the vertical harp with its angular upper protrusion and resonator under the strings.

The timpan is thought to have been a three-stringed lyre which later came to be bowed somewhere around the 11th or 12th century. When plucked it was probably done so with the fingernails (Buckley 2000:166). A interesting idea of what the timpan might have been comes from P.W. Joyce (1920:578-579) who wrote in 1920, that the timpan, a name usually associated with a drum, perhaps got its name because:

[It] was really a small flat tympanum or drum, with a short neck added, furnished with three or more strings, stretched across the flat face and along the neck, and tuned or regulated by pins or keys and a bridge--something like the modern guitar or banjo, but with the neck much shorter. The drum---with a few openings in the side - gave resonance; and probably during the playing, the body, or the stretched membrane of the drum, was struck now and then with the hand, as players now occasionally strike the body of the guitar so that to some extent it still preserved the character of a drum.

This theory has not been disproven or proven, so it is likely not completely accurate, but is an interesting thought.

Many stone carvings and some metalwork show pictures of musicians playing an the cruit as well as various wind instruments (Buckley 1993:20-21).³ However, it is thought that the cruit was a higher class because in the few old records that exist, cruit players are listed in obituaries *Buckley 2000:165). The harp was a later development and probably took the place of the cruit after it entered the Irish musical sphere. Ann Buckley (2000:166) points out in her article "Music and Musicians in Medieval Irish Society," that "Cruit players were more often attached to a chieftain's household than were timpan players, the latter being employed in the absence of a more prestigious cruit player, perhaps a comment on the status of the household." Pictures of harpists are often portrayed on stone crosses as well as other iconographic images.⁴

In Joan Rimmer's commentary on the Irish harp, she argues that the medieval Irish harpers were highly trained professional musicians whose repertoire was based solely on oral tradition (Rimmer 1969:31). She also discusses an artifact that dates from c. 1300. The harp is located at Trinity College (Rimmer 1969:32):

The little harp is about seventy centimeters high and had originally thirty strings, of which twenty-nine are strung at present. When diatonically tuned, this gives a range of four octaves, which is the largest of any type of medieval instrument other than the organ . . . the sound of the Trinity College harp when played with long fingernails in the old Irish way is extraordinarily sweet and clear, with a quality which is somewhat bell-like but with an added richness akin to that of the guitar. Giraldus's [Girald Cambrensis (O'Meara 1982:103-104)] word for the sound of the upper strings, tinitus or tinkling, seems to have been particularly apt, and it suggests that the Irish harps had already in the twelfth century a tonal characteristic similar to the harps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. (Rimmer 1969:33)

The little information available on performance practice suggests that syllabic poetry was "chanted to a harp accompaniment." Chanting was probably popular in the Christian churches in Ireland at the time (Hamilton 1988:288). It was also common for travelling monks to carry a small harp with them as mentioned in the lives of some of the Irish saints (Joyce 1920:572). Another type of chant was associated with a certain rank of secular poets whose job was to compose and chant poems extolling their masters or poems of satire which were considered a powerful weapon at this time (Richter 1983:16).

In reference to secular music, it is interesting to note that there is no notated proof, literary or otherwise, of dancing in Ireland before 1200 AD (Hamilton 1988:290). It seems unlikely that there was no dancing in Ireland before this time. There is evidence of a minor class of bards and minstrels called the crosans who were jester-like entertainers involved in poetical satire which was often presented in a musical setting and it seems inferred that they did a certain amount of obscene dancing, but there are no references to secular or sacred dances in any setting (Harrison 1986:298).

Evidence in the Brehon laws as well as in a famous woodcut of the Middle Ages strongly suggest that musicians were ranked in social stature according to their instrument.⁵ The most common forms of indoor entertainment of the aristocracy were probably music and storytelling (De Paor and De Paor 1958:106). Ann Buckley (2000:166) points out that a cruit player who was the chief court musician was considered to be the highest grade of independent commoner or freeman. In fact, they even had a kind of insurance policy: "The Laws determined a cruit player's honor-price-the fine levied upon anyone who insulted or injured him-as four cows in addition to other payment" (Buckley 2000:166).

A sketch of the great banqueting hall at Tara made in the 12th-century and again in the 14th-century gives some clue into the ranking of people by their profession and what portion of the banquet they were allotted. Among the musicians, who are spread out through the room, the cruit player is ranked highest and then the horn and trumpet players and finally the pipers. As Buckley (2000:170) states, "Of the musicians, only cruit players were freemen."

An important source where musicians are described in great detail is in the Táin Bó Fraich. Ann Buckley (2000:171, 174) summarizes this by describing:

seven horn players with instruments of gold and silver, wearing many-colored clothes and white shirts; and three cruit players, each with the appearance of a king from his style of dress, his arms and his steed. . . . The instruments referred to as cruit are carried in bags of otter skin, ornamented with coral over which there is more ornamentation of gold and silver. The bags are lined white roebuck skins, and these in turn are overlaid with black-grey strips of skin. White linen clothes are wrapped around the strings. The frames of the instruments are decorated in gold, silver and white bronze, with figures of serpents, birds and greyhounds. As the strings vibrate, these figures "went around the men", in other words, appeared to move and dance with the movement of the instrument and vibrating strings.

Buckley also cautions against falling into certain traps of assumption that commonly occur in the study of medieval Irish music. These pitfalls include, the noble savage view of the ancient Celt, and the idea that the Christian aspect of ancient myths committed to paper by Christian clerics can be peeled away (Buckley 1995:17-19).

The more looking and reading done in exploring medieval Irish music, the more information is uncovered. Hopefully, with the resurgence of interest in Irish music since the 1950's and 60's more people will delve into discovering the truth of medieval Irish music. Anything that could be so all embracing (references to music can be found in almost all types of medieval Irish surviving materials, ie stonework, metalwork, mythology, oral tradition, writings by visitors and the writings of the monks themselves) is definitely worth the trouble to take some time and wade through remnants of the society. Perhaps the Irish people's love for music can teach us something about our own society.