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the Second. These symbols of homage remained in the Vatican till the 

 reign of Henry the eighth, when the Pope, reserving to himself the 

 crown, which was of massive gold, sent the harp to that English 

 sovereign. The tyrant, however, placing but little value on the in- 

 strument, gave it to the first Earl of Clanrickard, in whose family it 

 continued to the beginning of the last century, when it passed in the 

 female line into other custody, and has been ultimately deposited in 

 the Museum before mentioned. Ledwich doubts the antiquity of 

 this relic, on account of the arms of the O'Briens, which now appear 

 chased upon it, but these may have been a later ornament. 



It is asserted that the Welsh had their harp from the Irish,* and 

 Warton, in his first dissertation on English poetry says, that "even 

 so late as the tenth century, the practice continued among the 

 Welsh bards, of receiving instructions in their profession from Ire- 

 land." It also appears that the Welsh bards were reformed and 

 regulated by Gryffith ap Conan, King of Wales, in the year 1078, 

 who, according to Powell, -f- " brought over with him from Ireland 

 divers cunning musicians into Wales, who devised in a manner all the 

 instrumental music that is now there used, as appeareth as well by the 

 books written of the same, as also by the names of the tunes and mea- 

 sures used among them to this day." The Danes likewise borrowed 

 this species of music from their victims ; and the Polychronicon at the 

 year 925, records a story, (similar to the well known stratagem of 

 Alfred,) of Aulaife, the Danish king of Dublin, entering the tent of 

 Athelstan in the disguise of a harper, to ascertain the strength of the 

 Saxons before the battle of Brunneburgh.:|: All the musical recom- 

 pense the foreigners seem to have communicated, was the introduc- 



• See Walker's Irish Bards, p. 69. t Hist. Cambr. p. 191. 



t Polychron. lib. 6. c. 6. ...... i:.:. : .i. .. .... 



VOL. XVI. O O 



