690 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



But there is still another conjecture of much deeper import which 

 arises through the discovery of the luren. Angul Hammerich fii'st 

 pronounced the opinion in the "Memoirs of the Antiquities of the 

 North" that the luren-folk might already have been acquainted with 

 a well-developed two-voiced music, which corresponded to our har- 

 mony in all essential elements. It must be remarked that the luren 

 performers were always depicted in pairs; as, for example, in the 

 Halle designs and the well-known tablet of the civic monument. In 

 agreement mth that, the luren themselves are almost always found 

 in pairs. They are always similarly shaped and correspond exactly 

 not only in size and ornamental decoration but are tuned exactly to 

 the same pitch. The possibility arises from this that the two luren 

 players played in unison, but it is not clear why one would wish to 

 hear the same notes from two players. There is a strong probability 

 that the intervals of the two luren were the same. Our folk songs 

 progress in tliirds and sixths bound together by fifths and fourths 

 when they are sung as duets. In this form also the luren performers 

 could play them perfectly well. It is probable at least that the luren 

 people were alread}^ familiar with two-voiced songs, and that our 

 two-voiced hunting signal already resounded in the German primeval 

 forest. Such a view becomes almost a certainty when we see how 

 the historical knowledge of the primitive history of polyphony leads 

 us back again into the German Northland, and to the secular folk- 

 songs found there. 



To a musician there is no need of proof that a jicople who had 

 luren must also have known of stringiul instruments of a well- 

 developed kind. The oldest literary testimony regarding northern 

 stringed instruments reaches back only to Diodorus, who describes 

 the satirical soiigs and the hymns of tli<^ Celts and Germans, who 

 accompanied thoniselves with lyre-liko instruments. Three Gallic 

 coins of the time of Caesar acquaint us mth the form of these instru- 

 ments. They correspond throughout with the oldest Greek stringed 

 instruments. From a sounding board a horn rises on the right and 

 another on the left, and the horns are bound together by a crossbar 

 from which the strings extend to th<^ sounding board. 



The northern origin of this instrument was, moreover, probable. 

 Greece had not possessed instruments of this kind for a long time 

 when that money was coined, and it is not to be supposed that the 

 Celts and Germans busied themselves with classical antiquarian 

 studies. There is an old traditional saying according to which the 

 ancient Greek zith(^.r was of Thracian origin. Direct testimony of a 

 preliistoric land for the confirmation of tliis idea was desirable, and 

 tliis we have now had since 1 892. Near Marz in Hungary were found 

 the AveU-known black urns \nth figured designs (illustrated by 



