Ossian Collection > Ossian, his principal poems

344 THE HARP IN THE HIGHLANDS.
taught her, but others also, in that district of the Highlands,
about the middle of the fifteenth century. In the same
manner, it must be inferred, from Queen Mary's having,
about a hundred years afterwards, presented the other lady
with her own harp, that she also was a performer on that
instrument, and had been taught by a master in a different
part of Scotland, her father's residence being at no great
distance from Aberdeen ; and from both instances we must
conclude that the harp was taught and performed upon, in
different parts of the Highlands of Scotland, in the fifth-
teenth and sixteenth centuries ; and that playing on, or
singing to the harp, was an accomplishment of the ladies of
the Highlands at this period. If we look back into more
remote ages, we shall still find this to have been the custom
in the upper ranks in that society ; and that the art of
playing on the harp, down to this period, in Scotland, as
well as in Ireland and Wales, proceeded from the same
original source, Avhich, to distinguish it from the musical
science that had, by this time, made great progress on the
continent, in England, and to a certain degree in Scotland,
may be aptly called the music or system of the Celtic
school. But Queen Mary, highly accomplished as she was
in musical science, which was not of the Celtic but of the
lialian school, although the harp described in this essay
was made and procured for her, does not appear to have
been a performer upon that instrument ; but having met
with a performer of eminent abilities, in the lady now
alluded to, the queen may be supposed to have been so
much pleased with her performance, and so much delighted
with the beauty of her native Caledonian music, on a
national instrument, played with a degree of skill which
she had little reason to expect, that she may have been in-