The Saxons were a musical people. We learn from Bede's anecdote of the poet Cædmon, that it was usual at their feasts to pass the harp round from hand to hand, and every man was supposed to be able to sing in his turn, and accompany himself on the instrument. They had a considerable number of musical instruments. In a MS. in the British Museum, Tiberius C. vi., folios 16 v., 17 v., 18, are a few leaves of a formal treatise on the subject, which give us very carefully drawn pictures of different instruments, with their names and descriptions. There are also illustrations of them in the Add. 11,695, folios 86, 86 v., 164, 170 v., 229, and in Cleopatra E. viii. Among them are the Psaltery of various shapes, the Sambuca or sackbut, the single and double Chorus, &c. Other instruments we find in Saxon MSS. are the lyre, viol, flute, cymbals, organ, &c. A set of hand-bells (carillons) which the player struck with two hammers, was a favourite instrument. We often find different instruments played together. At folio 93 v. of the MS. Claudius B iv. there is a group of twelve female harpists playing together; one has a small instrument, probably a kind of lyre, the rest have great harps of the same pattern. They probably represent Miriam and the women of Israel joining in the triumphal song of Moses over the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. [Illustration: _Saxon Organ._] The organ, already introduced into divine service, became, under the hands of St. Dunstan, a large and important instrument. William of Malmesbury says that Dunstan gave many to churches which had pipes of brass and were inflated with bellows. In a MS. psalter in Trinity College, Cambridge, is a picture of one of considerable size, which has no less than four bellows played by four men. It is represented in the accompanying wood-cut. The Northmen who invaded and gave their name to Normandy, took their minstrels with them; and the learned assert that it was from them that the troubadours of Provence learned their art, which ripened in their sunny clime into _la joyeuse science_, and thence was carried into Italy, France, and Spain. It is quite certain that minstrelsy was in high repute among the Normans at the period of the Conquest. Every one will remember how Taillefer, the minstrel-knight, commenced the great battle of Hastings. Advancing in front of the Norman host, he animated himself and them to a chivalric daring by chanting the heroic tale of Charlemagne and his Paladins, at the same time showing feats of skill in tossing his sword into the air; and then rushed into the Saxon ranks, like a divinely-mad hero of old, giving in his own self-sacrifice an augury of victory to his people.