en they come under our
observation. Inasmuch as there are no data existing whereby we can
determine whether these people discovered the harp anew for themselves
or derived it from some other nation, and greatly improved it, either
supposition is allowable. Upon the whole, the probabilities appear to
be that this instrument was among the primitive acquisitions of the
Aryans. All of them were hunters, to whom the clang of the bow string
must have been a familiar sound. As already suggested, it seems that
the harp must have been the oldest type of stringed instrument of all.
The Aryans who crossed the Himalayas into India may have lost it, in
pursuit of some other type of instrument of plucked strings.

The crwth presents still more troublesome questions, which we must
admit are still less hopeful of solution. (See Fig. 22.)

In this case we find an instrument played with a bow in northern
Europe, far one side the course of Asiatic commerce, at a time when
there was no such instrument elsewhere in the world but in India.
Whence came the crwth? The rebec was not known in Arabia until nearly
two centuries after we find the crwth mentioned by Venance Fortunatus.
We have seen that the Sanskrit had four words meaning bow, a fact
affording presumptive evidence of the knowledge of this mode of
exciting vibrations, while the Sanskrit was still a spoken language.
It is possible that the bow was a discovery of the Aryans in their
early days, ere yet the family had begun to separate. The crwth may
have been a survival of this primitive discovery, still cherished
among a people not able to employ it intelligently, and not able to
develop its powers. For while the crwth was in Europe two centuries
before the violin, the improvement of this instrument was due to
stimulation from quite another quarter. It was the Arab rebec that
afforded the starting point for the modern violin, and this instrument
was not known in Europe until it came in by way of the crusaders or
the Spanish Arabs.

[Illustration: Fig. 22.]

Another popular instrument of music in all parts of Britain from the
earliest of modern times, was the bagpipe, a reed instrument generally
of imperfect intonation, the melody pipe being accompanied by a
faithful drone, consisting of the tonic and its octave, and
occasionally the fifth. It was the witty Sidney Smith who described
the effect as that of a "tune tied to a post." This instrument was
common in all parts of Britain