“cut to measure stalks of reed and fixed them in through holes bored in the stoney shell of the tortoise, and cunningly stretched round it the hide of an ox, and put in the horns of the lyre, and to both he fixed the bridge and seven harmonious cords of sheepgut. Then took he his treasure when he had fashioned it, and touched the strings in turn with the plectrum, and wondrously it sounded under his hand, and fair sang the God to the notes, improvizing his chant as he played.”
—this version is elegant, some readers would prefer to have the more literal description given by Dr. Burney:—
“the invention of the lyre is attributed to the Egyptian God Hermes or Thoth.... Hermes walking along the banks of the Nile, happening to strike his foot against the shell of a dried tortoise, was so pleased with the sound it produced that it suggested to him the first idea of a lyre, which he afterwards constructed in the form of a tortoise, and strung it with the dried sinews of dead animals.”
The myth will be useful in accounting for the very frequent appearance of the tortoise-shell lyre in the classical designs of the Greek artists in their vases, bronzes and sculpture.
| The Chelys or tortoise-shell lyre. | Fig. 60. |
This illustration will represent the finished style so often seen, with the shell and the twisted horns. The ancient artist evidently did not know how the instrument was constructed, and has exaggerated the size of the shell, and curtailed the strings, in a wise ignorance of musical effects depending upon resonance.
The Chelys (from chelus, a shell) is the typical form of the Greek lyre, there is no trace of it in Egyptian paintings, they have the more primitive slant-bar style with the square-shaped body, but the Greeks coming much later in date appropriated the method of uniform length of the strings, and although we often read of “the shortest and the longest strings,” the evidences of such in use are hard to find. That many-stringed lyres became accepted in certain circles of society cannot be doubted, the names of many such being current, and the extent over which the series of notes ranged being likewise stated, yet on their vases and marbles and in the best period of classic art, we find the Chelys, and the various modifications of it up to the perfected lyre in the hands of Apollo, alone thought worthy of representation. The abundance of these is marvellous, and the imagination conjures up visions of numberless treasures still waiting beneath the native soil.
Not only was the Chelys the lyre of the gods, it was also the domestic lyre; the tortoise lyre was everywhere at home. The British Museum possesses one of these, alas, one must say, fragments of one, and reckons this poor wreck of musical feeling and devotedness (for it was found in a tomb) a rare and choice treasure. This Chelys is of sycamore and is light and of very simple make, the cross-bar is forked at each end, and so formed it slips over the trimmed points of the two uprights, and rests on notches cut on each side for the purpose; the uprights are shaped to well-known curves and the lower ends were fixed in the tortoise shell, which covering a piece of wood formed a soundboard. Only a portion of the shell remains. The crossbar still retains the black marks made by the strings that in life were wound round it, and tightened there, that the lyre might make music to the fingers of the youth it had comforted, and was lovingly placed in the tomb that it might still continue to comfort him.
As it lay in the case under glass, the measurements as near as I could take them were,—length of arms or uprights 15 inches, the crossbar fixing three inches below the tips of these, and extending 1½in. beyond, between the arms the width at the crossbar 7½in. increasing in the curves to 8½in., the shell with soundboard I reckon as about 7 by 3½in., thus the whole length appears to be 22 inches. The general look of it gives the idea of graceful slimness, the wood is sycamore, and the construction of the lyre so simple that it might have been home-made.