Music

In Music, the ancient Irish were highly celebrated: it is stated that in the latter end of the eleventh century, about A.D. 1098, Griffith ap Conan, prince of Wales, who had resided a long time in Ireland, brought with him to Wales “divers cunning musicians, who devised in manner all the instrumental music upon the Harp and Crowth that is there used, and made laws of ministrelsy to retain the musicians in due order” (see Hanmer’s “Chronicle,” page 197). It thus appears that the famous Welsh bards were indebted for their knowledge of the harp chiefly to the Irish. Giraldus Cambrensis, the Secretary of King John, who came to Ireland with the Anglo-Normans in the twelfth century, was a Welshman, and a learned ecclesiastic; he extols the skill of the Irish in music, and says that in his time they excelled in music and minstrelsy all the European nations.