Image: Burnt Lyre Bridge, from High Pasture Cave – from Steven Birch, Case Study, High Pasture Cave (ScARF – Scottish Archaelological Reseaerch Framework)
One challenge in harp history is that the name of the indigenous instruments may stay the same even if the design of the instrument changes: working out what is meant by names can be difficult. However, new archaeology suggests that even before the appearance of the triangular-shaped harp, there were earlier stringed instruments in Scotland shaped like oval lyres.
Excavations between 2005-2007 at the High Pasture Cave (Gaelic, Uamh An Ard Achadh) in Skye, found that this remote site, whose entrance had been roughly blocked by fallen blocks of stone, had been in human use over a period dating from c800BC to c150 AD. Amongst many other finds was a burnt lyre bridge, and suggestive fragments that could be linked to stringed instrument tuning systems.
Archaeologists have long been aware of lyre-shaped string instruments in used in Scandinavia as well as in the Anglo-Saxon sites. Such an instrument was reconconstructed for example, from remnants found at the Sutton Hoo ship burial site in Suffolk. Carvings on stone scattered around northern and western Europe suggest that these instruments had ceremonial uses.
Image: Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon Lyre, re-constructed. By Photo: Andreas Praefcke – Self-photographed, Public Domain. Wikicommons, acessed 31 March 2025.
The archaeologists associated with the High Pasture cave dig on Skye have explained – and now expand in their complete monograph (see Further Reading) – that this cave site was a long-standing place of ritual practice. One can imagine ritual music resonating in the dark. A surviving relic of this lost culture of sacred music is the burnt lyre bridge heading up this post. Charred, and thus waterproofed, it has survived the passing of centuries. Why it was burnt – accident, or ceremony – is unknown, but it clearly shows notches capable of carrying strings stretched to high tension. Nearby were found objects made of antler and alder which suggested anchor points for strings and possible tuning mechanisms. A section of the archaeology monograph written by John Purser and Graeme Lawson compares this to other ancient stringed instruments, imagining, using this comparative method, how this Skye lyre might have been played.
Purser and Lawson identify Gaelic terms – crott, tiompan, and later clarsach – which have slightly different semantic associations (p.418). “Crott”, they suggest, implies a curved or arching instrument – like the hump of a back of a whale – particularly, in Irish and Gaelic usage, association with early Christian mission encounters with indigenous music. The term feeds forward into the later Gaelic word ‘cruitt’. The word “tiompan” is distinct from this, implying ‘striking’ something as one might a timbrel – i.e. as if the instrument had a skin rather than a wooden resonator cover. References in 8th / 9th century poetry to “tiompan” sounds may also suggest something with metal components. So, we have one word suggested a curven instrument, and another that suggests an instrument that is struck. The combination could suggest an approach to playing a stringed instrument that might have been the precursor to the wire-strung clarsach – or might not. What has been now found appears to suggest an earlier instrument not shaping the triangular shape of the clarsach, although ‘humped’, evidence for which has been found in quite a few sites around north western Europe. Not a clarsach, but a lyre.
Other than the bridge and some suggestive fragments, the rest of the instrument is lost, but videos allow the archaeology team- John Purser and Graeme Lawson – to talk about and to play a possible reconstruction. How it was tuned, and the nature of the melodies, are obviously impossible to reconstruct, but the ritual situation of this find suggests that in Skye, strumming on strings has a very ancient history.
The full findings from the excavations, which put the posited lyre within a context of hundreds of years of ritual activity round this site, is now available from Oxbow books. For those interested in the ritual use of Scottish music, key sections to read are:
- Graeme Lawon and John Purser, ‘Musical instrument bridge and related finds from High Pasture Cave and their context’, and on site acoustics and the lyre bridge itself in Part 4, “Biographies in life and death: material culture”, pp.412-527.
- ‘Theatres of Experience and A Sense of Place’, in part 6, “Ritual, memory, and identity: High Pasture through time”, pp.567-568.
The item has also been written up by John Purser in an article published in 2019.
Further Reading
- Steven Birch, ‘Case Study: High Pasture Cave‘, on ScARF (Scottish Archaeological Research Framework) website, accessed 31 March 2025
- Steven Birch and Jo McKenzie (eds.), High Pasture Cave: Ritual, Memory and Identity in the Iron Age of Skye (Oxbow Books, 2025) – and available on JSTOR currently
- “Ancient Stringed Instrument – Replica Being Played” – Historic Environment Scotland, 29 March 2012
- John W. Purser, ‘A Lyre Bridge of the Early Iron Age from High Pasture Cave, Scotland: 2, The Context: Environmental – Perceptual – Symbolic – Culture, and its Implications’, in Studien zur Musikarchäologie XI (2019), pp.265-280