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204 National Music of the World.
ceive the more complete Welsh harpers to have been.
One crossed into Scotland, a certain Rory Dall, in regard to whose country Hibernian and Scot have fought fiercely : and about whom there is seme terrible controversial tradition that he may have played the harp to the lady of many legends, Mary of Scotland ; as if she had not among her foreign retainers imported an Italian harper called Rizzio. Rory Dall is paid to have left his harp and its tuning key in Scotland. Echlin Kane was another of these men, a blind Irish harper that wandered over the world, got so far as France, Spain, and Italy, was patronised by the Pretender, and complimented by Lord Macdonald of Skye, by a present of Rory Dall's silver tuning key; but who was such a riotous personage when in Lord Macdonald's house (the blind are often doubly riotous because of the loss of their eyes),' that the Highland Jacobite gentry found it occasionally necessary to repress his turbulence by cutting his nails, and so rendering him unable to flay till they grew again to their proper length?
I said that the Irish had from an early period 1 harp, and pipe, and symphony.' Their pipe was the bagpipe again, the same pipe as belongs to Calabria, |
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