Ossian Collection > Ossian, his principal poems

" The Nile having overflowed its banks at the periodical period for
the rise of that wonderful river, on its subsidence to its usual level,
several dead animals w-ere left on the shores, and amongst the rest,
a tortoise, the flesh of which being dried and wasted in the sun,
nothing remained within the shell but nerves and cartilages, which
being tightened and contracted by the heat, became sonorous.
Mercury, walking along the banks of the river, happened to strike
his foot against this shell, and was so pleased with the sound pro-
duced, that the idea of the lyre suggested itself to his imagination.
The first instrument he constructed was in the form of a tortoise,
and was strung with the sinews of dried animals." — Apollodorus.
" The most ancient representations of the lyre, it must be
observed, gave some colour to the tradition of its being first con-
sti'ucted out of the shell of a tortoise. On the old celestial globes it
was x'epresented as if made of the entire shell of that animal ; and
the lyre of Amphion, in the group of the Dirco, or Toro, in the
Farnese palace at Eome, which is of very high antiquity, is of a
similar shape,"