Rotte (lyre)

The rotte was a European lyre of northwestern Europe.^[13] Non-Greek or Roman lyres were used in pre-Christian Europe as early as the 6th century B.C. by the Hallstadt culture, by Celtic peoples as early as the 1st century B.C., and by Germanic peoples.^[13] Its existence was recorded in the Scandanavian and Old-English story Beowulf, set in pre-Christian times (5th-6th century A.D.) and written or retold by a Christian scribe about 975 A.D.^[19][20] It a descendant of the ancient lyre which originated in western Asia.^[13] That same instrument was adopted in Ancient Egypt and also by the Ancient Greeks as the cithara.^[13]

See Rotte (psaltery) for the medieval psaltery, or Rote for the fiddle

Rotte (lyre)

Sutton Hoo Lyre replica, British Museum
String instrument
Other names	Germanic lyre[1] Viking lyre, Scandanavian lyre[2] harpa, hörpu (ONorse)[3][4] Anglo-Saxon lyre[2] hearpe (OEng)[5][2] cruð (OEng)[6] cruit (OIrish),[6][7][8] crot[6][9] crowd (MidEng)[10] chrotta (OHGer, Latin)[6][11] hruozza (OHGer)[12] rota (OProv)[13][14] rotta (OHGer, OProv, MedLatin)[13][15] rote (OFr, MidEng)[13][16] rotte (MidHGer)[13][17] sambuca (MedLatin)[18]
Hornbostel–Sachs classification	321.21 (Composite chordophone in which the strings run in a plane parallel to the sound table, with a yoke (a cross-bar and two arms) that lies lying in the same plane as the sound-table, with a bowl-shaped resonator)
Developed	descendant of the ancient lyre which originated in western Asia; cousin to Asian instruments adopted in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece[13]
Related instruments
Plucked lyres: Phorminx Kinnor Kithara Lyre Bowed lyres: Crwth Giga Gue Jouhikko Stråkharpa Talharpa

It was a large plucked and strummed lyre that was played in Anglo-Saxon England, and more widely, in Germanic regions of northwestern Europe. The oldest lyre found in England dates before 450 AD and the most recent dates to the 10th century. The Anglo-Saxon lyre is depicted in several illustrations and mentioned in Anglo-Saxon literature and poetry. Despite this, knowledge of the instrument was largely forgotten until the 19th century when two lyres (Oberflacht 84 and 37) were found in cemetery excavations in southwest Germany. The archaeological excavation at Sutton Hoo in 1939, and the correct reconstruction of the lyre in 1970, brought about the realisation that the lyre was "the typical early Germanic stringed instrument."^[21]

The Museum of London Archaeology describes the lyre as the most important stringed instrument in the ancient world.^[22] Differing from the lyres of the Mediterranean antiquity, Germanic lyres are characterised by a long, shallow and broadly rectangular shape, with a hollow soundbox curving at the base, and two hollow arms connected across the top by an integrated crossbar or ‘yoke’. From northwestern Europe—particularly from England and Germany—an ever-growing number of wooden lyres have been excavated from warrior graves of the first millennium A.D.

"Evidence of manuscript illustrations and the writings of early theorists suggest that, in Anglo-Saxon and early medieval times...the words hearpe, rotte and cithara were all used to describe the same instrument, or type of instrument."^[13] The direction of the spread of the instrument is uncertain. The instrument may have developed in several locations.^[13] Other possibilities include an Irish instrument that spread eastwards to Germany, or an instrument of central Europe that spread northwest.^[13] Across Europe, lyres were named with etymologically related variations: crwth, cruit, crot (Celtic); rote and crowd (English); rota, rotta, rote, rotte (French, English, German, Provencal).^[13]

The name was to be reused; in the 12th century, scribes complained that the common name for the German lyre, Rotta, was being applied the triangular psaltery.^[23]

The instrument disappeared in most of Europe, surviving in Scandinavia, and elsewhere remembered in medieval images and in literature.^[2] After archeological finds, the instrument has been recreated and studied anew, labeled Germanic round-lyre, Anglo-Saxon lyre, Germanic lyre and Viking lyre today.^[24][1][25] Historical names include rotta (and variations rota, rotte, rote, Hörpu (Old Norse) and hearpe (Old-English).^[2][3][13]

Naming the lyre

Chelys, Tortoise

About 60-30 B.C., a historian Diodorus Siculus wrote of the existence of a lyre played by Celtic bards, who used the instrument to accompany their singing songs of praise or trash-talk about others.^[26] About 600 years later, those lyres were identified by Venantius Fortunatus (530-609 A.D.) as being called the chrotta.^[26]

Chrotta or hrotta was a translation of the Greek word for lyre, chelys, into Old High German.^[27][6] The German and Greek words mean tortoise.^[27][6] Cognates of chrotta include cruð, crot, cruit, crwth, crouth.^[6] From these words arose rotte, rota, rote and crowd.^[6]

Across northwestern Europe, Celtic and Germanic tribes played a form of lyre whose names were linguistically related: the Celts called theirs crwth or cruit; to the English the instruments were rote or crowd; the French called theirs rote and the Germans rotte.^[28]

An instrument called a rote or rotta appears in medieval manuscripts from the 8th to the 16th century,^[29] where the name is sometimes applied to illustrations of box-like lyres with straight or waisted sides.^[30] Some surviving writings, however, indicate that contemporary writers may have applied the name to the harp.^[30] The rote is probably related to the equivalent Irish word cruit and also the Welsh bowed lyre known as the crwth.^[30] In these texts the rote clearly applies to a stringed instrument, but it is seldom clear which instrument is meant.^[29]

Lyre versus harp

Today the lyre is defined as an instrument where the strings are parallel to the soundboard, with a bridge between the two, similar to a violin or guitar. A harp is an instrument where the strings are perpendicular to the soundboard. This classification is entirely modern, as historically people made little distinction between lyres and harps.

In Old English the lyre was called a "hearpe" and in old Norse a "harpa", the word coming from Latin, "to pluck".^[28] For much of early medieval times, hearpe, rotte and cithara described plucked string instruments. grouped because of the way they were played.^[28]

Modern names

There is no modern universal name for the Anglo-Saxon lyre, but terms occasionally used include "Germanic lyre", and "Viking" or "Nordic lyre". All of these also suffer from regional bias, so are not accepted as universal names. The term "Northern lyre" is sometimes used as a neutral name.^[31]

Excavated lyres

Oberflacht (Germany)

The Oberflacht lyres gave evidence to a different kind of musician, the "Germanic warrior-musician".^[32] The graves marked them as warriors, and they were buried with their instruments in their arms.^[32]

The first Germanic lyre (Oberflacht 37) was found in 1846 in Oberflacht, not far from Konstanz on the Upper Rhine.^[33][34] It was found in a wooden burial chamber dated to the early 7th century.^[34] Less than half of the lyre survived, fragmented into four parts.^[33][34] It has a soundbox and arms hollowed out from oak, with a soundboard of maple.^[33] Initially the artefact was interpreted as the body and neck of a lute.^[34]

The second lyre was found in 1892 within the same cemetery in Oberflacht.^[34] This lyre (Oberflacht 84) was remarkably complete.^[34] Oak was used for the soundbox, whereas the soundboard was made from maple.^[35] The arms bent slightly outwards towards the top end, where the yoke was fastened to the arms with wooden pegs.^[35] It had no sound-holes.^[36] This lyre was moved to Berlin where it was preserved in a tank of alcohol.^[37][36] The lyre was destroyed during World War II when Russian soldiers drank the alcohol.^[36]

Köln (Germany)

The Köln (or Cologne) lyre was discovered during excavations in the Basilica of St. Severin, Cologne in 1939.^[38][39] It was found in a grave dated to the late 7th century/early 8th century.^[38] Only the left half of the lyre had survived.^[38] The soundbox was hollowed out from oak and covered with a maple board, which had been fastened with copper alloy nails.^[38] The yoke had six tuning pegs which decomposed when retrieved.^[38] There was evidence of a tail-piece of iron.^[39] This lyre was destroyed in bombing in June 1943.^[38][36]

Sutton Hoo (England)

Sutton Hoo lyre, British Museum

Excavated in 1939, the Sutton Hoo ship burial dates from the early 7th century.^[40] The lyre had hung on the western wall of the chamber in a bag made out of beaver-skin.^[40] When it fell down, it hit a Coptic bowl and broke into pieces, and fragments from the upper part landed inside the bowl.^[40] What survives are the yoke, six tuning pegs, two metal escutcheons fashioned into interlace bird heads that joined the yoke to the hollowed-outside arms, and portions of the side arms.^[41]

The lyre was constructed from maple wood.^[40] The arms were hollowed out almost up to the joint and were then covered with a maple soundboard fastened with bronze pins.^[42] There were five willow pegs and a sixth of alder wood.^[42] The maple fragments of the lyre reveal beaver hair pressed onto it indicating a fur-lined carrying bag.^[41]

When the lyre was discovered at Sutton Hoo it was not identified as a lyre. Although three lyres had previously been unearthed in Germany, Rupert Bruce-Mitford mistakenly turned to another known stringed instrument, the harp, an instrument thought to exist in the early medieval era.^[43] In 1948 an awkward and unconvincing reconstruction of the lyre in the shape of a rectangular harp was revealed, based on (indistinct) harps depicted on some 9th century Irish stone crosses and harps in two English manuscripts from the 11th and 12th centuries.^[43][44] This harp was put on display in the British Museum in 1949.^[45] This interpretation lasted until 1970 when Rupert Bruce-Mitford and his daughter Myrtle, reassessed the instrument correctly.^[46]

The new reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo lyre was aided by comparison with the other lyre remains.^[43] The first lyre from Oberflacht was preserved in a museum in Stuttgart; and a very fragmentary English lyre, unrecognized as such since its excavation in 1883 from a barrow in Taplow, Buckinghamshire, was finally recognised as a lyre.^[47] The remains of the two other German lyres had been destroyed in World War II but these also had been studied and published.^[47] With the reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo lyre came the realisation that the musical instrument referred to as a "hearpe" in Beowulf and similar writings, was in fact a lyre and not a harp.^[48] The accuracy of the Sutton Hoo lyre reconstruction was confirmed when further lyres were excavated from Trossingen in 2001 and Prittlewell in 2003.^[49]

Trossingen (Germany)

See Trossinger Leier (in German)

Trossingen lyre

Trossingen lyre, showing the willow-wood bridge that was found with the instrument.^[50] Even though its bridge was built for seven strings, the lyre itself only had pegs for six strings.^[50] The bridge sat on the soundboard between the soundholes.^[50] Dimensions: 31 5/8 × 7 11/16 cm × 5/16 inches.^[51]

The Trossingen lyre was discovered in the winter of 2001/2002 during excavations of a cemetery at Trossingen, in Baden-Württemberg, not far from Oberflacht.^[52] The lyre was found in a narrow burial chamber, with weapons and items of wooden furniture.^[52] Discovered in water-logged conditions, the lyre is exceptionally well-preserved.^[53]

Dating to circa 560 A.D. (the Merovingian period), it was excavated from a medieval cemetery in Germany.^[51] The lyre was made of maple with a thin maple soundboard nailed and glued to the body with bone glue.^[51][53] It had soundholes on the soundboard and on the yoke arms.^[51] There is a bridge made from willow and six tuning pegs, four of which are ash and two are hazel.^[53] Its six strings were probably horsehair or gut.^[51]

The lyre has an exceptional set of decorations.^[53] On one side there are two groups of warriors, while the remaining space is decorated with an animal style pattern.^[54]

Prittlewell (England)

The Prittlewell royal Anglo-Saxon burial was discovered in 2003, and was one of the richest Anglo-Saxon graves ever found.^[55] The wooden lyre had almost entirely decayed except for a dark soil stain revealing its outline. Fragments of wood and metal fittings of iron, silver and gilded copper-alloy were preserved in their original positions, and the "complete form" of the instrument could be captured with modern imaging technology.^[22][55] The entire block of soil was lifted and moved to a conservation lab where it was examined with X-rays, CT scans, and a laser scan.^[55] Micro-excavation revealed that the instrument was made of maple with tuning pegs made of ash.^[22] The lyre had been broken in two at some time during its life and put back together using iron, gilded copper-alloy and silver repair fittings.^[22]

Lyre finds to date

At least 30 lyre finds of this type have been discovered in archaeological excavations, including one in Denmark, eleven in England, eight in Germany, two in the Netherlands, three in Norway and four in Sweden.^[56] The majority of lyre finds are either bridges or parts of the upper yoke and surrounding fittings.^[56] One find, from Sigtuna, Sweden, consists of a tuning key for adjusting tuning pegs.^[57]

Date	Name	Country	Comments
550-450 B.C.[58]	High Pasture Cave	Isle of Skye (Scotland)	Section of a bridge[59][60] If from a lyre, the find shows the instrument's early use in Scotland. Scanned with laser to show dimensions.[61] Bridge is a fragment.	Illustration showing a bridge for a stringed instrument, from High Pasture Cave, Isle of Skye
5th century	Abingdon-on-Thames	England	Found in a Saxon cemetery from 425-625 A.D. Curved bone yoke fragment with five holes. Bone "facings" (18.3 and 18.5 cm long), one on the front and one on the back of the yoke.[62][63]	Facing for lyre yoke. Yellow holes are original (where pins passed through).
560 AD[50][64]	Trossingen	Germany	Near-complete lyre with elaborate carvings.[50] Found in a grave of a member of the Alemanni people.[65]	Bridge found with Trossingen lyre, circa 560 A.D. 8.8 cm × 1 cm × 2.2 cm.[64]
590 AD	Prittlewell	England	Decayed wooden remains with metal fittings and wood fragments
6th century	Oberflacht (84)	Germany	Found in a hillside called "Lupfen", "Lupfen bei Oberflacht" or "Lupfenberg", now referred to as Oberflacht after the Oberflacht parish.[32] Near-complete lyre lost in World War II. 81 cm long, oak body, maple soundboard. Arms bent outward slightly where yoke was attached.[66] The Oberflacht lyres probably did not have a tailpiece, and strings were directly attached directly to the "peg end" on the bottom of the instruments.[67] Other possibilities include an intermediary "loop of gut cord or wire hitched around the end-button" and a tailpiece made by inserting a rigid bar into the loop.[67] However the Cologne lyre had an iron tailpiece, and tailpieces were illustrated in 9th century manuscripts.[67]	Oberflacht 84 outline based on replica destroyed during WWII Artist impression in 1915 of Oberflacht (84) lyre.[68] Modern researchers put less curve in the sides.[66]
Late 6th / early 7th century	Schlotheim	Germany	Antler bridge, 5.9 cm long, designed to hold 5 strings. Asymmetrical, "oblong and unshaped".[35]
6–7th century	Bergh Apton	England	Metal fittings and wooden arm fragments
6–7th century	Eriswell 221[69]	England	Decayed wooden remains with copper-alloy fittings
6–7th century	Eriswell 255[69]	England	Scatter of wood and metal fragments in the shape of a lyre
6–7th century	Eriswell 313[69]	England	Jointed top of a lyre
7th century	Oberflacht (37)	Germany	Large fragments of the left side of a lyre
Early Anglo-Saxon	Morning Thorpe	England	Two wooden fragments with metal pins and plates
610–635 AD	Sutton Hoo	England	Upper parts of the arms with two bronze bird plaques; a yoke with six holes; and five pegs
620–640 AD	Taplow	England	Metal bird ornaments and wooden fragments of the yoke and joints	Picture at British Museum website[70]
Anglo-Saxon	Snape	England	Wooden fragments from the arms and upper joints; copper alloy strip and pins
Late 7th / early 8th century	Cologne	Germany	Roughly one-half of a lyre. Destroyed in World War II
720 A.D.[71]	Ribe[71]	Denmark	Wooden yoke with six holes and four tuning pins.[71] Urban Viking culture, found in coastal town.[71]
8th century	Dorestad (140)	Netherlands	Amber bridge	Image of Dorestad 140[72][73]
8th century	Dorestad (141)	Netherlands	Amber bridge	Image of Dorestad 141[74][73]
8th century	Elisenhof I	Germany	Amber bridge fragment
8th century	Elisenhof II	Germany	Amber bridge
Viking age	Birka	Sweden	Horn lyre bridge for a string instrument. One side is shiny and smooth, the other is porous. Bridge for a musical instrument.[75]	Circa 800-1100 A.D. Lyre bridge of horn, Statens Historiska Museer.
Frankish	Concevreux	France	Bronze bridge with animal head decoration	Illustration of a bronze bridge for lyre. The bridge was found at a grave in Concevreux; the culture was Franks.[73]
9th century	Broa	Sweden	Amber bridge	Circa 800-1100 A.D. Bridge for lyre made of amber, found in Broa, Halla, Gotland, Sweden.
10th century[56]	Coppergate dig site, York[56][76]	England	Wooden bridge. (front view): "quadrangular" with hole in center, 2.7 cm high, 6 grooves on top for strings.[56] (side view): triangular, point at top, wide end resting on soundboard.[56] Viking settlement, urban setting.[56]	Front view of a lyre bridge found in York, England at the Coppergate dig site.
10–11th century	Hedeby	Germany	Arched wooden yoke with six holes
11th century	Gerete	Sweden	Bronze bridge	800-1100 A.D. Gerete, Fardhem parish, Gotland, Sweden. Bronze bridge for lyre, 8 strings. Exhibited as Viking Age artifact.[77]
1100 AD	Sigtuna	Sweden	Tuning key made from elk horn, and carved with runes	Tuning key with runes.
Early 13th century	Trondheim	Norway	Wooden bridge
Early 13th century	Oslo I	Norway	Wooden bridge
Mid-13th century	Oslo II	Norway	Wooden bridge

Construction

Of the lyres analysed, all the bodies are made of maple, oak, or a combination of the two. The material for the bridges on the lyres varies greatly, including bronze, amber, antler, horn, willow and pine. The preferred wood for the pegs being ash, hazel or willow. The lyres range from 53 cm (Köln) to 81 cm in length (Oberflacht 84). Half the lyres found have six strings, a quarter have seven strings, and the remainder five or eight strings, with only two having the latter.^[78]

Anglo-Saxon lyre in ancient images

Gotland lyre, rock carving, 6th century

Apart from archaeological finds, images of the lyre have been uncovered by researchers. The Vespasian Psalter, an early 8th-century Anglo-Saxon illustrated book originating from Southumbria (Northern Mercia), contains the best image of the lyre found. It shows King David playing the lyre with his court musicians. The image is a common one repeated across the Christian world, usually with David playing a harp; however, in some English versions he has an Anglo-Saxon lyre, such as the one in the Vespasian Psalter. The image gives some insight into how the lyre was played, notably the left hand being used to block strings showing he was using a type of play known as strum and block. This same method of lyre playing appears on many Ancient Greek illustrations of lyre playing.

The Durham Cassiodorus is a book containing an image of King David playing the Anglo-Saxon lyre. The book originates from Northumbria some time in the 8th century. The image of David playing is awkward and may have been drawn by an artist who had never seen the lyre actually being played.

The oldest image of the lyre comes from Gotland in Sweden, where a rock carving dating from the 6th century has been interpreted as an image of a lyre.^[79]

Another image of the lyre being plucked can be found in the Utrecht Psalter, a 9th Century book of illustrations from the Netherlands.

Celtic lyre

Further information: Origin of the harp in Europe, Commons:Category:Cruit (lyre), and Tiompan

8th-9th century A.D., Abbey of Kells, Ireland. Musician (possibly David) playing a round-topped cruit on the Kells West Cross; strings can be seen as a cone shaped bundle.^[80]

Late 9th-10th century A.D., Ireland. Monasterboice South Cross, East Face. The instrument has been interpreted both as a harp and as an asymmetrical lyre.^[81][82]

Among the peoples of Scotland and Ireland, early images of stringed instruments may be seen in carved reliefs and manuscript illustrations.^[26] The earliest images of European harps are found in Pictish relief carvings.^[83]

Other stringed instruments can be seen as well, including lyres (or quadrangular stringed instruments).^[26] Three styles of lyre are seen on the stone crosses: round topped instruments, instruments with one straight and one curved arm, and asymmetrical (or oblique) instruments.^[80] Telling the difference between a harp and a lyre in these images may be problematic because they are badly eroded. Should they show a bridge, they may be clearly labeled lyre.^[82] Without a bridge, the possibility exists of a harp being presented.^[82]

In Irish, the instruments were called cruit or crot and timpán.^[26][84] The cruit initially seems to have referred to a lyre.^[85][84] Later in the 8th-10th century A.D., when triangular (or "trilateral") harps appeared, the word cruit would apply to them as well.^[85][26][84] Once the name for a lyre, cruit would come to apply to smaller harps, while larger harps would be called cláirseach.^[86]

The timpán was a lyre with a willow body and three metal strings, played using "a long fingernail or plectrum" by musicians of lesser status than the professional cruitire (bards).^[87][84] It became a bowed instrument, the crwth, "after the early 11th century" or by the 12th century.^[87][84] Used to accompany "Fenian epics and praise poetry."^[87]

Over time, researchers have interpreted artwork differently; an example is the instrument on the Monasterboice South Cross, which has been called both harp and lyre.^[81][82][88] Both types of instruments would be illustrated in the religious reliefs on the Irish and Scottish High Crosses.

An Iron Age era bridge found in the Isle of Skye is currently the earliest known piece of a European stringed-instrument, dating to about 500-450 B.C.^[89][90]

• 
  Musician playing "quadrangular" cruit, rubbing on fabric from the 8th or 9th century A.D. High Cross, Ullard Church, County Kilkenny, Ireland.^[26][84] One straight and one curved arm.
• 
  10th century manuscript image showing cruit. Ms. Cotton Vitellius F xi, folio 2r. Infrared photograph of page burned in fire. Lyre built in style of one straight and one curved arm.
• 
  Cotton Vitellius F xi, folio 2r, redrawn in 1850. Colorized digitally. Image shows some lyres had a forepost (the dog) added to the lyre's arch, creating the not-quite symmetrical shape in some depictions.
• 
  Musician playing cruit, Castledermot early monastery, South Cross. The earlier monastery was founded circa 812 A.D., ending about 1073 A.D.^[91][92] One straight and one curved arm.
• 
  Rubbing of a section of the Castledermot, North Cross, showing a musician playing a cruit.
• 
  Kells South Cross. Asymmetrical lyre (accompanied by musicians playing double or triple pipes).

Playing the lyre

The Anglo-Saxon lyre being played using the block and strum technique. Image from the Vespasian Psalter, 8th-century England.

10th century A.D., Germany. David playing a round, waisted Germanic lyre. Image in Egbert Psalter (Egbert of Holland, Archbishop of Trier from 977-993).

Much research has been done by scholars into how the lyre was played. This takes two forms: historians of early music who used their knowledge of historic music and instruments to work out how to play it and historians who read old texts to find mentions of it.

The Vespasian Psalter and Durham Cassiodorus provide the only good images of the lyre being held. These show it placed upon one knee with one hand held behind it to block or pluck strings. Prolonged use of it in this way would be difficult, as the left arm would tire, having no place to rest upon. In five of the lyre finds, evidence of a wrist strap has been found to take the weight of the left arm. These finds consist of either leather loops or plugs on the side of the lyre to fit a strap on. Wear marks have also been found on the arms of the Trossingen lyre, indicating when the left hand was not being used to play, it was gripping the arms of the lyre.^[78]

Tuning

How the lyre was tuned is unknown. The only contemporary account of lyres comes from the Frankish monk and music theorist Hucbald in his book De Harmonica Institutione, written around 880 AD. In it he describes how he believes the Roman philosopher, Boethius (480–524 AD), would have tuned his six-string lyre. Whether how the Romans tuned their lyres is transferable to Anglo-Saxon lyre is debated among aficionados. Hucbald's conclusion was that Boethius used the first six notes of the major scale.^[93]

Block and strum technique

Angle-Saxon Lyre from 9th century Utrecht Psalter.

The block and strum technique seems to have been a widely used and very common technique for lyre playing, images of it being used can be found on Ancient Egyptian wall art, on Ancient Greek Urns and specifically for the Anglo-Saxon Lyre on the Vespasian Psalter. To use the technique the lyre is strummed while the other hand mutes several strings, so only strings which combine to make chords are heard. The number of chords a lyre can make is limited compared to a fretted instrument and is also dependent on the number of strings it has. An alternative strum and block technique to chord playing is to tune one or more strings as drone strings and use the remaining strings to play melody, similar to a hurdy-gurdy.

Plucking

The Utrecht Psalter contains an image of the Anglo-Saxon lyre being plucked, the musician is shown plucking two strings simultaneously creating a chord. Plectrums were also used to play the lyre, the Anglo-Saxons having several words for plectrum, the main one being hearpenaegel.^[94] Several copper objects have been found the exact size and shape of modern-day plastic plectrums and may have been plectrums, however no proven plectrums survive so their make up can only be surmised. Other possibilities include quills made from bird feathers which were known to have been used to play medieval lutes, medieval Ouds used plectrums made animal horn and wood.

Anglo-Saxon lyre in literature

Five-string lyre from the Durham Cassiodorus, 8th-century England. The instrument sits on the musician's leg as he plays and is supported by a strap around the musician's wrist.

According to musician Andrew Glover-Whitley, "music [among the Anglo-Saxons] was seen as coming from the Gods and was a gift from Woden who was, amongst many things, the God of knowledge, wisdom and poetry and as such bestowed the ‘magic’ of music on the people. ... It was also seen as a power to do good or evil, to help cure people of maladies of the mind, soul or body as well as able to inflict harm on enemies and to conjure up spirits that would be of help or to do your bidding against enemies."^[95]

There are 21 mentions of the lyre in Anglo-Saxon poetry, five of these in Beowulf.^[19] Mentions of the lyre in literature commonly associate it as accompanying storytelling, being used during celebrations or in context of war.^{[citation needed]}

þaér wæs gidd ond gléo: gomela Scilding felafricgende feorran rehte· wílum hildedéor hearpan wynne gomelwudu grétte· hwílum gyd áwræc sóð ond sárlíc· hwílum syllíc spell rehte æfter rihte rúmheort cyning·	there was song and glee: old Scylding who has heard tell of many things, from long ago narrated; at times this battle-daring one the harp for pleasure the old-wood played; sometimes recited a song, true and tragic; sometimes strange tales he related rightly, the open-hearted king
—Beowulf, lines 2105–10

Bede, relating the story of Cædmon (the "first" English poet), describes how the lyre was passed around during feasts, so that as part of the merriment people could pick it up and sing songs.^[96] This is similar to other instruments such as the bagpipes which are also described as being passed around at feasts (Exeter Codex). The songs played on the lyre include Anglo-Saxon epic poetry and it is likely that performances of Beowulf, the Wanderer, Deor, the Seafarer etc., were enacted with the lyre providing the backing track.

Origin and relationship to lyres elsewhere

8th century B.C. of earlier. Translation of extant depictions of musicians playing lyre-like stringed instruments from Stringed Instruments of the Hallstatt Culture - From Iconographic Depiction to Experimental Reproduction by Beate Maria Pomberger

2nd or 1st century BC bust found in Paule, in Brittany

Scythian lyre, 4th century B.C. Detail from the Sakhnivka-gold-plate.

The relationship between northern European lyres of the first millennium and earlier lyres of the classical Mediterranean is not at all clear.^[97] A distinction between Mediterranean and northern strands of lyre culture dates from much earlier than the Middle Ages.^[98] In the 4th century BC a lyre was depicted on a broad gold Scythian headband known as the Sakhnivka Plate.^[99][100] This artwork, from a kurgan of Sakhnivka in modern Ukraine, shows a long, extended lyre similar to the shape of later Germanic lyres.^[98][100]

Another find of the same type is a wooden instrument excavated in 1973 from a medieval settlement belonging to the Dzhetyasar culture in southwest Kazakhstan. Dating to the 4th century AD, recent re-examination of the artifact has emphasized its close similarity to Germanic lyres.^[101] "One bears a strikingly close resemblance to lyre finds from Western Europe, including the instrument from Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo: the Sutton Hoo lyre....if it had been discovered in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, or indeed anywhere else in the West, the Dzhetyasar lyre would not have seemed out of place.^[101]

Another similar instrument is the traditional nares-jux, or Siberian lyre, played among the Siberian Khanty and Mansi peoples.^[102]

In central Europe, lyres are depicted on artefacts of the proto-Celtic Hallstatt culture from around 700 BC,^[103] although their forms differ greatly from Germanic lyres. A later lyre gauloise is shown on a stone bust from the 2nd or 1st century BC which was discovered in Brittany, France in 1988.^[104] It depicts a figure wearing a torc playing a seven-string lyre, likely constructed from wood, but with a wider, rounder body like the turtle-shell lyres of ancient Mediterranean cultures.^[104][105] An excavation in 2010 in High Pasture Cave on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, revealed a piece of wood dating from the 4th century BC, which is interpreted by some non-experts to be a bridge of a lyre.^[106][107] The bridge being burnt and broken makes it hard to estimate how many notches it would have originally had, with only two or three remaining. This has prompted some to suggest it was an early bowed lyre similar to a Shetland Gue, however this is also unlikely as the use of a bow on stringed instruments don't appear in the British Isles until approximately the 11th Century AD.

The six-string Germanic lyre tradition appears in the archaeological record by the 2nd century AD, in a settlement at Habenhausen near Bremen, Germany.^[108] A wooden object excavated in the 1980s from a marsh settlement in Habenhausen, turned out to be the yoke of a lyre.^[109] The six holes show that the original musical instrument, barely 20 cm wide, had six strings.^[109]

Transition to lute, a theory

See Cythara for theories on lute/guitar development in medieval Europe

In the early 20th century, Kathleen Schlessinger published a theory in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica which suggests that the modern acoustic guitar could have arisen from the rotte, in changes observed in iconography.^[110]

Under Schlessinger's theory, the crossbar on a bass rotte lyre would disappear and its arms shrink, replaced by an arm in the middle (the lute or guitar's neck). When the neck was added to the rotta's body, the instrument ceased to be a rotta and became a guitar, or a guitar fiddle if played with a bow.

• 
  Figure 3 from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica article "guitar fiddle." The picture illustrated a theory showing the transformation of the lute from a lyre. (A) base rotta (C) the first transformation (B) the cithara as lute (D) the cithara as lute.^[110]
• 
  Charles the Bald Bible miniature, showing an instrument midway between lyre and lute
• 
  Illustration used in Britannica theory. Arms are gone and the central neck enlarged.
• 
  Illustration used in Britannica theory
• 
  Illustration used in Britannica theory
• 
  Circa 1125-1150 A.D., Germany. Schlessinger wrote, "Both instruments have three strings and the characteristic guitar outline with incurvations, the rotta differing in having no neck."^[110]

See also

• Kithara, a 7 string Greek lyre with a wooden soundbox
• Krar, a 5 or 6 string lyre from Ethiopia and Eritrea