Out of the Stones

BOB PEGG describes an exciting if speculative project to recreate the kind of ancient music that might have been heard on Orkney prior to its joining Scotland in 1468.

A COUPLE OF years ago I was talking with Steve Callaghan, Orkney Islands Council Heritage Officer, when we hit upon what we thought was a really exciting project: to make a CD of the kind of music that could have been heard in Orkney from prehistoric times up until 1468, when the islands were handed over to the King of Scotland – the working title of the CD would be Out of the Stones.

Right from the start, we had to confront one big problem. During the period we had chosen, there was no solid evidence of music making on Orkney: no written accounts, no identified instruments, no manuscripts. Music is found in all societies, and Orkney would have been no exception, but we had to decide what kind of sounds might have charmed Orcadian ears during a period of around 5500 years.

No-one knows what forms music may have taken in prehistoric times. We can only assume that it would have functioned as it does today, woven into the fabric of life: to accompany singing, dancing, religious ceremonies; as a part of courting rituals, and to help babies go to sleep; to raise the spirits when they are low, to whip up martial fervour in times of conflict, and countless other functions. These could be guiding principles for our very early re-creations.

What instruments might the first hunter-gatherers in Orkney have used to make music? My first suggestion would be, what was around them. Given people’s inherent curiosity and cleverness, they would surely have experimented with natural objects, just as we can today.

The beach would have been a great hunting place for music. Two pebbles, banged together, can make a great variety of sound, depending on whether they are held by the fingertips or in the palms of the hand. Pierced shells, strung together, can be a rattle, worn on a dancer’s wrist or ankle. Stones with holes in can be blown across, like an empty bottle, to produce a warning whistle or to imitate a bird call; and some stones can even be made to produce two distinctive notes, like a natural ocarina.

Scallops and other ridged shells can be scraped together to make complex rhythms, just as they still are today in Northern Spain. A whole band, with percussion and melody, could be got together from the seashore.

“Andrew Appleby, the Orkney potter, has a theory that the drum may have been discovered by accident when someone stretched a skin over the top of a clay pot to protect the contents”

Tom Muir, the Orkney storyteller, who works for the Orkney Museum in Kirkwall, has a wonderful story about his mother, Lizzie Drever, who was born on the island of Westray, and was girl there in the 1920s.

Sometimes, when her father was out fishing, a great fog, a haar, would roll in from the sea and swallow up his boat, leaving him in danger of being drawn out by the current onto the high seas. When this happened, young Lizzie would go down to the beach and pick up one of the empty “buckie” shells, tiny winkles, that are found there in their thousands.

Blowing into the shell, she would make a piercing whistle that could be heard way out at sea. Her father would whistle in reply, and, as they called back and forth, she used the sound of the shell to guide him back to the shore, and safety. It’s not hard to imagine the daughter of one of the early settlers rescuing her father, adrift in his log boat, in just the same way over 5000 years ago.

For people with little resources, another readily available soundmaker would be the bullroarer, an instrument still used by the Australian aboriginal people. This is a flat, elongated object – bone, wood or stone -with a hole pierced in one end. It’s whirled around on a cord, and makes a noise like a huge angry wasp, or a great cat growling. A possible bone example around 8500 years old has been found in Denmark, and similar more recent objects were discovered in the brochs in the Western Isles of Scotland.

And what about that most widespread of instruments – the drum? Andrew Appleby, the Orkney potter, has a theory that the drum may have been discovered by accident when someone stretched a skin over the top of a clay pot to protect the contents – maybe some precious grain.

It’s a lovely idea, and impossible to prove, of course, but for people living on islands where there were few trees, a clay drum would have made sense (though in earlier prehistory there would have been more trees on Orkney, so wooden drums would have been possible).

On our recording we’ve been lucky enough to use two of Andrew’s pots, covered with goatskin. One is a replica of a vessel found in a Bronze Age Swiss lake village, and the other is based on Orcadian Unstanware. Our player is Alistair MacLeod, a 17 year old percussion virtuoso from the Highlands of Scotland and, boy, does he make those drums talk!

There are many other possibilities for prehistoric instruments, based upon archaeological finds from Northern Europe and further afield: scrapers of bone (and wood), bone buzzers (possible examples have been found on Orkney), clay and metal rattles, clay whistles, bells, and the great horns, the lurs, shown on rock carvings from the late Bronze Age (around 2700 years ago), a pair of which were recovered intact and still playable from a Danish peat bog. There are birch bark trumpets too – still made today – and animal horns.

“when we reach the medieval period we begin to get a clearer picture of what music making was like”

My own favourite “prehistoric” instrument is the bone whistle or flute. Examples (end blown rather than crossways like the concert flute) go back a long way. There’s a Chinese crane bone flute from 9000 years ago, which is still playable, and a very speculative Slovenian example made from the bone of a cave bear, going back around 50,000 years.

For our recording we use an instrument of deer bone, which was made by Stacey O’Gorman, who produces Alba penny whistles, some of the best around. Stacey was handed a bone from a freshly slaughtered animal, and had to clean it up before she began work. She said she never wanted to make one again, but the sound of her instrument is wonderfully rich and will feature on our recordings as an example of what can be achieved by a skilled craftsperson using the simplest materials.

The bone flute brings us into more recent historical times, because a playable example was found in Birka, in Sweden, dating from the 10th century. And when we reach the medieval period we begin to get a clearer picture of what music making was like. As well as some physical remains, we have accounts of musical activities and instrument tunings, cathedral carvings and illuminated manuscripts showing instruments, and written pieces of music.

But, back into the world of possibility again: what kind of music might have been heard on Orkney by the Vikings, when they first started their raids around 1200 years ago?

The people who were living there were the Picts. We have no Pictish writings, so their culture and history is quite mysterious, but they did leave many famous carved stones, and on some of these stones are images of harps. These harps vary in size, but most are distinctively straight sided.

“during the historical period our project covers, Orkney was not the quiet, isolated place that it seems today, but a major maritime crossroads”

The first appearance is in Nigg, in Easter Ross, probably from the 8th century, but the great inspiration for us comes from the 11th century Lethendy tower, in Perthshire. It shows two monks, one playing a harp, the other the triple pipes, with what may be a drum between them.

Today, the triple pipes are only played in Sardinia. Two melody pipes and one drone, with single reeds, are placed in the mouth of a player who uses circular breathing (like a didgeridoo player) to make a continuous sound. We can only speculate how they came to be found in Pictland, but the potential for a great combination of sounds was irresistible.

We flew in a triple pipe player from Sardinia and, together with percussionist Alistair MacLeod and harper Bill Taylor, he made the kind of music which might just have been heard by the Vikings when they started to make more durable contact with the inhabitants of the Orkney islands.

Bill Taylor is my collaborator on Out of the Stones. We worked together previously on a recording called Breaking the Silence: Music Inspired by the Picts. Bill, originally from Washington State, knows an enormous amount about early Celtic harp music. His playing on reconstructed Pictish harps – beautifully made from native woods by Ardival Harps of Strathpeffer – will be one of the main unifying threads in our new recording.

A great inspiration for us has been the realisation that, during the historical period our project covers, Orkney was not the quiet, isolated place that it seems today, but a major maritime crossroads, where folk from many lands and cultures would have met and partied – especially if they were musicians!

In later times an instrument that would have been familiar, probably to all visitors, was the lyre. This is a plucked or strummed string instrument, a hollow box, rectangular or rounded in shape. Its strings are of equal length, which distinguishes it from the triangular harp, whose strings get progressively longer (and which has a much greater range of notes).

When, in a poem included in the Orkneyinga Saga, Earl Rognvaldr Kali Kolsson writes of his achievements, “I know how to consider both harp-playing (harpslott) and poetry”, he is almost certainly speaking of the lyre. We have lyre music on Out of the Stones too, played with a plectrum by Bob Evans of Cardiff, and almost rock and roll in spirit, although the music is based on ancient Bardic accompaniment patterns.

Bob also plays the bowed lyre – a lyre played like a fiddle – which was popular in the Middle Ages (there’s a 12th century carving in Trondheim cathedral), but was still being played in Finland and Sweden into the 20th century. He’s joined by his musical partner Mary Ann Roberts, who contributes some strikingly dramatic sung performances of early poetry which comes from the British kingdoms of what is now Southern Scotland, and could have been heard in Orkney as early as the 7th century.

“The Jorvik pipes had been broken – perhaps that’s why they were thrown into the Coppergate pit – but reconstruction gave a scale of five notes”

Another track on Out of the Stones comes from a late 13th century manuscript, now in Uppsala University Library, with two pieces written by the same hand, both with Latin texts. One celebrates the Marriage of Margaret, daughter of Alexander III of Scotland with Erik Magnusson, the King of Norway, in 1281. The other is in praise of Magnus Erlendsson, uncle of Earl Rognvaldr Kali, murdered on the island of Egilsay in 1116 or thereabouts, and in whose memory the Earl had built the magnificent cathedral in Kirkwall.

This piece of music is the famous Hymn for St Magnus. It’s written in two parts, in thirds, and used to be thought of as both an example of distinctive Norse polyphony, and something exclusively Orcadian. It does now seem to have been neither, but rather a re-working of musical themes common in Northern Europe at that time.

Whatever its provenance, this by-product of the Magnus cult, which grew up after his death, still has a plangent freshness and serenity which can captivate today. It’s usually recorded with a full choir, but we decided on a quiet, intense, devotional version with solo harp, and the voice of James Ross.

Finally, two of my favourite instruments, both of which feature on Out of the Stones. The first is one of the great musical finds of the Viking world. In 1976, excavations were taking place in Coppergate, in the English city of York, which was once the important Viking port of Jorvik.

In a 10th century pit, a set of boxwood panpipes was found. They weren’t like the panpipes we know from Ancient Greece, or from South America, separate tubes of reed or cane, tied together in a row. Instead they were made from a solid block of wood with holes of varying lengths skilfully drilled down into it, to make the different notes.

The Jorvik pipes had been broken – perhaps that’s why they were thrown into the Coppergate pit – but reconstruction gave a scale of five notes, roughly from A to E in the modern major scale, giving a flattened third note to make the beginning of the old Dorian scale. Stacey O’Gorman made a replica set which will be played on Out of the Stones, perhaps as close to the sound of Viking music as we can get.

And my last instrument, another from the Viking period, is the one sometimes called the Jew’s harp (though nobody knows why). In Scotland it’s the trump, in France the guimbarde, in Sweden the mungiga, and so on – through Europe and the Middle East, out to the Philippine Islands. [one theory is that it should really be ‘jaw harp’ from the playing positon in the mouth – ed]

The instrument can be made of bamboo, though from Europe to Mongolia it’s a small metal frame with a flexible metal tongue set into it. The frame is held against the teeth with one hand, the metal tongue is twanged with the thumb or first finger of the other hand, and the mouth acts as a sound box.

The resulting sound sometimes reminds people of the didgeridoo; in skilled hands the instrument can be made to play, to talk, even, when played by an Altai virtuoso, to imitate the sound of horses’ hooves. I love this instrument because it’s cheap to buy, you can keep it in your pocket, and it’s fun to play! On Out of the Stones we’ve experimented by teaming up the trump with a harp to duet on a medieval dance, the Estampie.

There are still avenues to explore before the CD is finally released in 2005. We have to record Tom Muir declaiming some of Earl Rognvaldr’s skaldic verse. Perhaps we should look at including bagpipes, hurdy gurdy and fiddle. Bill Taylor has already recorded some harp variations on Faroese ballad tunes. Maybe we should consider them again as important source material. And if anyone who reads this has any other ideas, we’d be delighted to hear from you.

What might the next project be? Well, in 1151-53  Earl Rognvaldr Kali made a pilgrimage from Orkney, down along the east coast of Britain, around the French coast (spending time in Narbonne in the company of the Lady Ermingerd), and Spain (attacking a Galician castle), through the Straits of Gibraltar, along the north coast of Africa, (a little piracy here) to Jerusalem and then on to Constantinople. What a world of music this would have brought him into contact with, and what a wonderful recording a reconstruction of that music could be…

Suggested listening (some of these recordings might be hard to find, but all are fascinating in their own different ways):

Musica Sveciae, Fornnordiska klanger (The Sounds of Prehistoric Scandinavia) – Cajsa S Lund and others. MSCD101.

The Kilmartin Sessions – devised by John Purser. Re-creations of prehistoric Scottish music, with many fine musicians. CD available from Kilmartin House Museum in Arg
ll, email museum@kilmartin.org

Coirn ne hEireann, Horns of ancient Ireland. Simon O’Dwyer plays original Bronze Age horns. Search under “Simon O’Dwyer” for website or contact at Crimlin, Corr na Mona, Co. Galway, Ireland.

Khomus, Jew’s harp music of Turkic peoples in the Urals, Siberia, and Central Asia. Some astounding examples of musicianship. PAN 2032CD. PAN Records, PO Box 155, 2300 AD Leiden, Netherlands.

© Bob Pegg, 2005