P R E F A C E.

original: "Itinerary" The Topography of Ireland, written by Giraldus Cambrensis in the 12th century, contains this remarkable passage: “I find the attention of these people to musical instruments to be worthy of praise. Their skill in this area is beyond all comparison superior to that of any nation I have seen. In their music, the modulation is not slow and solemn, as it is in the instruments of Britain to which we are accustomed; instead, the sounds are rapid and fast-paced, yet at the same time sweet and pleasing. It is wonderful how the musical proportions are preserved amidst such hurried speed of the fingers. Through their art, the music remains faultless throughout their complicated modulations and most intricate arrangement of notes. With a speed so sweet, a regularity so irregular, and a harmony so discordant original: "a concord so discordant" — a rhetorical device describing the resolution of musical tensions., the melody is rendered harmonious and perfect. Whether the intervals of the fourth or the fifth original: "Diatesseron or Diapente" — technical musical terms derived from Greek for the intervals of a perfect fourth and a perfect fifth. are struck together, they always begin in a soft mood and end in the same, so that everything is perfected in the sweetness of delicious sounds. They enter into and leave their modulations with such subtlety, and the tinkling of the small strings plays so freely over the deep notes of the bass—delighting with such delicacy and soothing so softly—that the excellence of their art seems to lie in concealing it.” Giraldus Cambrensis, Topographia Hibernica, Distinctio 3, Chapter 11.

But the fame of Irish music was so great a century before the arrival of Cambrensis that the Welsh bards, who were so celebrated for their knowledge of this art, condescended to seek and receive instruction from those in Ireland. A passage from David Powell, their own historian in the sixteenth century, provides evidence of this: “Gruffydd ap Cynan,” says Powell, “brought over with him from Ireland various skilled musicians into Wales, who (he boldly asserts) devised almost all the instrumental music that is now used there. This is apparent both from the books written about the music and from the names of the tunes and measures used among them to this day.” David Powell, The History of Cambria, now called Wales, 1584 edition, p. 191. This assertion by Powell is supported by the learned John Selden: “Their music” (he says, speaking of the Welsh) “mostly came out of Ireland with Gruffydd ap Cynan, Prince of North Wales, around the time of King Stephen.” John Selden’s notes on Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion, Song 9. King Stephen reigned from 1135 to 1154.

Caradoc of Llancarfan, who was also Welsh and lived in the twelfth century, assures us—without any of the narrow-minded bias common among national writers—that the Irish created all the instruments, tunes, and measures used by the Welsh.

According to the testimony of ancient historians like Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Ammianus Marcellinus, bards existed among the earlier branches of the Celtic tribes before the time of Augustus Caesar. We find them under the same name in Ireland from the earliest period of our history down to the year 1738, when Turlough Carolan died. Carolan seems to have been born to make the end of his order memorable and brilliant. If we consider the disadvantages he faced—born blind, with limited opportunities for gaining an education, and living in a country recently devastated by a civil war The Williamite War in Ireland (1688–1691). whose flames had scarcely died down—and add to this his own tendency toward idleness and dissi—