Talk:Anglo-Saxon lyre

The OP seems to have used citations from books rather than sources that are available online. I am unsure how to mitigate this issue as I can't find online versions of these sources. Help would be appreciated. Jaromefnc (talk) 11:30, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

No mitigation is required. Please see WP:OFFLINE. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 23:05, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Origin and relationship to lyres elsewhere

the "Origin and relationship to lyres elsewhere" section seem completely redundant. Talking about other unrelated lyres from completely different time periods. Should probably be deleted. Toltecitztli (talk) 05:25, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

I added that section. Some of it was just trying to reorganise material others had added to the page, such as the stuff about Gaulish lyre, and that Skye lyre bridge. It could probably be cut down a bit, and that sort of material just moved to the Lyre page. But there are some connections which are given some importance in the literature on Anglo-Saxon lyres, after all, noone thinks Germanic lyres came out of nowhere. To be clear, all I'm interested in is what the academic literature has to say on the subject, I'm not trying to impose my own agenda here.

Firstly the similarities of Germanic lyres to the earlier Scythian lyres is something described in the references given. That's all, they just say these lyres look very similar.

Second, is the recent reporting on the Kazakhstan lyre: The Sutton Hoo lyre and the music of the Silk Road: a new find of the fourth century AD reveals the Germanic lyre's missing eastern connections. Gjermund Kolltveit's paper emphasises the similarity to Germanic lyres. This is an important, well-publicised, recent paper. Right now this lyre, being so far east, is an anomaly, perhaps there's no immediate connection, but as Kolltveit says, if this lyre had been found in western Europe it would be classified as a Germanic lyre. I don't want to over-emphasise this, but it's there, it exists and the experts are talking about it, and thus surely worth mentioning.

Third, is that lyre bridge found on the Isle of Skye. This is something actually given emphasis by Graeme Lawson in his writings on Anglo-Saxon lyres. Lawson is considered one of the leading experts on Germanic lyres. I personally think very little needs to be made of this, since at this stage it is just a bridge for (apparently) a six-string instrument. I agree it's a bit annoying, it's just that Lawson thinks there's a relevant north-European lyre connection here, and he's someone you have to listen to concerning Anglo-Saxon lyres.

Fourth, there's the 2nd century lyre yoke from Bremen, Germany. This just seems to be unequivocally a yoke of a Germanic-style lyre, and hence important as a possible early example of this tradition. Pasicles (talk) 11:58, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Apparently there was also another lyre bridge found in an ancient Scottish crannog dating to around 500 BC. 2601:642:4C00:7B3:F853:6649:3832:FDE (talk) 01:02, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

The whole Graeme Lawson reminds me of the discovery of the Sutton Hoo lyre, which was misidentified and reassembled as a harp. It stayed on display in the British Museum this way for decades. Now we have Graeme Lawson identifying an object, (now expert can say is a lyre bridge) as a lyre Bridge, slapping it on an Anglo-Saxon lyre, a lyre that didn't exist for another 1000 years and with no context, calling it a Scottish lyre. It's the same as me digging up a medieval comb, slapping it on a Fender Strat and calling it a medieval guitar. British archaeologists have a poor track record with lyre discoveries. Toltecitztli (talk) 02:04, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Merge proposal

@Pasicles, Toltecitztli, Hvækmínavn, Jessicapierce, Bob Burkhardt, and Fire: Proposal for merging Rotta (lyre) and Anglo-Saxon lyre. Jacqke (talk) 21:14, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I propose merging Anglo-Saxon lyre into Rotta (lyre), renaming it Rotte (lyre). The article would be under the name Rotte (lyre) but would keep the Anglo-Saxon-lyre article intact as is.

:Reason: The rotte name was in standard use during the instrument's life; according to The New Grove Encyclopedia of Musial Instruments, in the 12th century, scribes were complaining that the common name for the German lyre, Rotta, was being applied to an inappropriate instrument, the triangular psaltery. New Grove makes it clear that an instrument (descended from Western Asia and Egypt) was used across Europe by Germanic and Celtic people, called by a variation of the name Rotte (crwth, cruit, crot in Celtic, rote and crowd in English, rote in French, Rotte in German). Illustrations for the New Grove article include Sutton Hoo, Oberflacht (see Reconstructions of Germanic Lyres in Grove Music Online) and Cologne Germanic lyres, as well as the Kravik lyre from Norway. It also includes the Bespasian psalter image. Much of the current Rotta (lyre) article is about a theory in which the instrument changed into a guitar; that content is already addressed in Cythara and doesn't need to be in the merged article; images of Anglo-Saxon lyres File:Utrechts-Psalter PSALM-149-PSALM-150 psalterio or lyre.jpg from the Utrecht Psalter can be added as appropriate. Jacqke (talk) 21:06, 27 October 2024 (UTC)