This last instrument is evidently an improvement upon the triangular psalterium, because it has a sort of small sound-board at the top. Scarcely better, with regard to acoustics, appears to have been the instrument designated as nablum, which we engrave (p. 87) from a manuscript of the ninth century at Angers.
A small psalterium with strings placed over a sound-board was apparently the prototype of the citole; a kind of dulcimer which was played with the fingers. The names were not only often vaguely applied by the mediæval writers but they changed also in almost every century. The psalterium, or psalterion (Italian salterio, English psaltery), of the fourteenth century and later had the trapezium shape of the dulcimer.
The Anglo-saxons frequently accompanied their vocal effusions with a harp, more or less triangular in shape,—an instrument which may be considered rather as constituting the transition of the lyre into the harp. The representation of king David playing the harp is from an Anglo-saxon manuscript of the beginning of the eleventh century, in the British museum. The harp was especially popular in central and northern Europe, and was the favourite instrument of the German and Celtic bards and of the Scandinavian skalds. In the next illustration from the manuscript of the monastery of St. Blasius twelve strings and two sound holes are given to it. A harp similar in form and size, but without the front pillar, was known to the ancient Egyptians. Perhaps the addition was also non-existent in the earliest specimens appertaining to European nations; and a sculptured figure of a small harp constructed like the ancient eastern harp has been discovered in the old church of Ullard in the county of Kilkenny. Of this curious relic, which is said to date from a period anterior to the year 800, a fac-simile taken from Bunting’s “Ancient Music of Ireland” is given (p. 91). As Bunting was the first who drew attention to this sculpture his account of it may interest the reader. “The drawing” he says “is taken from one of the ornamental compartments of a sculptured cross, at the old church of Ullard. From the style of the workmanship, as well as from the worn condition of the cross, it seems older than the similar monument at Monasterboice which is known to have been set up before the year 830. The sculpture is rude; the circular rim which binds the arms of the cross together is not pierced in the quadrants, and many of the figures originally in relievo are now wholly abraded. It is difficult to determine whether the number of strings represented is six or seven; but, as has been already remarked, accuracy in this respect cannot be expected either in sculptures or in many picturesque drawings.” The Finns had a harp (harpu, kantele) with a similar frame, devoid of a front pillar, still in use until the commencement of the present century.
One of the most interesting stringed instruments of the middle ages is the rotta (German, rotte; English, rote). It was sounded by twanging the strings, and also by the application of the bow. The first method was, of course, the elder one. There can hardly be a doubt that when the bow came into use it was applied to certain popular instruments which previously had been treated like the cithara or the psalterium. The Hindus at the present day use their suroda sometimes as a lute and sometimes as a fiddle. In some measure we do the same with the violin by playing occasionally pizzicato. The rotta (shown p. 91) from the manuscript of St. Blasius is called in Gerbert’s work cithara teutonica, while the harp is called cithara anglica; from which it would appear that the former was regarded as pre-eminently a German instrument. Possibly its name may have been originally chrotta and the continental nations may have adopted it from the Celtic races of the British isles, dropping the guttural sound. This hypothesis is, however, one of those which have been advanced by some musical historians without any satisfactory evidence.
