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EARLY ENGLAND. 5 |
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ments of this class have been found in Ireland, a country rich in Celtic antiquities, and considered by many writers to be Celtic.5 They are preserved at the Royal Irish Academy at Dublin, and are of considerable size, having the embouchure at the side, like the Ashantee war-horns-in the British Museum.
It was the custom in those remote times to enter battle with a war-song. The Britons would shout their "Armed Confederacy of Britain," just as the Saxons did their "Song of Odin."6 The so-called Welsh martial music of to-day no doubt breathes the same spirit as that of the ancient Britons. As Sir J. G. Ouseley has said: " Probably no race of men has preserved so much, unaltered, from the great storehouse of the past as these Cambro-Britons; and it is, therefore, not unreasonable to conclude that in their oldest tunes we may have the remains of what was anciently the music of this country long before the Roman invasion under Julius Caesar."7
It was the marches—"The Men of Harlech," "Captain Morgan's March " and " Come to Battle," that led Dr. Crotch to say that the military music of the Welsh was "superior to that of any other nation."8
The martial music of the Saxons and Danes seems to have been much upon the same plan as that of the |
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• Wakeman, "Irish Antiquities," 1842.
'Meyrick, "Ancient Armour."
' Naumann, "History of Music."
'Crotch, "Specimens of Various Styles of Music," etc. |
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