Category: Music

There isn’t a lot of evidence of music in the archaeological record, but there is some. The bards of the ancient Irish and Welsh referred to by the Romans and Greeks mostly performed “praise poetry,” elaborate formalized praise of their patrons’ deeds. There is some fairly solid evidence, some of it archaeological, that the bards accompanied their poetry with something like a lyre or harp. The early Celts also used carefully constructed war trumpets called carnyx; we have some of them still.

Later, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the border ballads, many of them collected by Francis James Child (hence their name as the Child Ballads) were closely associated with Scotland, and to a lesser extent, Ireland. These are part of what is today often described as Traditional Celtic music from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the islands, and yes, England too. (There is also some similar music, using harps, pipes, bag pipes, from other lands settled by Celtic speakers, including Breton and Galacia).

These are posts dealing with music, though admittedly not all of it is ancient, medieval, or even Celtic.