A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle AgesWright, Thomas
History
A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages
Wright, Thomas
England -- Social life and customs -- 1066-1485
In the mediæval vocabularies we find several lists of musical
instruments then best known. Thus John de Garlande, in the middle of
the thirteenth century, enumerates, as the minstrels who were to be
seen in the houses of the wealthy, individuals who performed on the
instruments which he terms in Latin, _lyra_ (meaning the harp), _tibia_
(the flute), _cornu_ (the horn), _vidula_ (the fiddle), _sistrum_ (the
drum), _giga_ (the gittern), _symphonia_ (a symphony), _psalterium_
(the psaltery), _chorus_, _citola_ (the cittern), _tympanum_ (the
tabor), and _cymbala_ (cymbals). The English glossaries of the
fifteenth century add to these the trumpet, the _ribibe_ (a sort of
fiddle), organs, and the crowd. The forms of these instruments of
various periods will be found in the illustrations which have been
given in the course of the present chapter. It will be well perhaps to
enumerate again the most common; they are the harp, fiddle, cittern
or lute, hand-organ or dulcimer, the shalm or psaltery, the pipe and
tabor, pipes of various sizes played like clarionets, but called
flutes, the double pipe, hand-bells, trumpets and horns, bagpipes,
tambourine, tabret, drum, and cymbals. We give two further groups
of figures in illustration of these instruments, both taken from
the Royal MS. so often quoted, 2 B. vii. In the first (No. 134) we
have a boy (apparently) playing the cymbals; and in the second (No.
135) an example of the double flute, which we have already seen in
Anglo-Saxon manuscripts (see before, pp. 35 and 65), and which appears
to have been one of the musical instruments borrowed immediately from
the Romans. In conclusion of this subject we give a group of musical
instruments (No. 136) from one of the illustrations of the celebrated
book entitled “Der Weise König,” a work of the close of the fifteenth
century.
[Illustration: _No. 135. The Dulcimer and Double Flute._]
[Illustration: _No. 136. Musical Instruments._]
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