Note 1101 — APPENDIX I. AN ESSAY ON THE ANCIENT MINSTRELS IN ENGLAND.

Giraldus Cambrensis, writing in the reign of K. Henry II. mentions a very extraordinary habit or propensity, which then prevailed in the north of England, beyond the Humber, for "symphonious harmony," or singing "in two parts, the one murmuring in the base, and the other warbling in the acute or treble." (I use Dr. Burney's version, vol. ii. p. 108.) This he describes as practised by their very children from the cradle; and he derives it from the Danes (so Daci signifies in our old writers) and Norwegians, who long over-ran and in effect new-peopled the northern parts of England, where alone this manner of singing prevailed. (Vide Cambriae Descriptio, cap. 13, and in Burney, ubi supra.) Giraldus is probably right as to the origin or derivation of this practise, for the Danish and Icelandic scalds had carried the arts of poetry and singing to great perfection at the time the Danish settlements were made in the north. And it will also help to account for the superior skill and fame of our northern minstrels and harpers afterwards: who had preserved and transmitted the arts of their scaldic ancestors. See Northern Antiquities, vol. i. c. 13, p. 386, and Five pieces of Runic poetry, 1763, 8vo. Compare the original passage in Giraldus, as given by Sir John Hawkins, i. 408, and by Dr. Burney, ii. 108, who are both at a loss to account for this peculiarity, and therefore doubt the fact. The credit of Giraldus, which hath been attacked by some partial and bigotted antiquaries, the reader will find defended in that learned and curious work, Antiquities of Ireland, by Edward Ledwich, LL.D. &c. Dublin, 1790, 4to. p. 207, & seqq.