Skye find may add a millennium to history of music

THE HISTORY of music in Britain may be 1,000 years older than originally thought.

Archaeologists have found what could be the remains of Europe’s oldest stringed instrument.

A small wooden fragment thought to be from a 2,300-year-old lyre was found at an excavation site in High Pasture Cave on the isle of Skye.

Music archaeologists Dr Graeme Lawson and Dr John Purser studied the piece and said the notches where strings would have been placed are easy to distinguish on the artefact — despite it being been burnt and broken.

Dr Lawson said: “For Scotland, and indeed all of us in these islands, this is very much a step change.

“It pushes the history of complex music back more than a thousand years into our darkest pre-history, and not only the history of music but, more specifically, of song and poetry because that’s what such instruments were very often used for.

“The earliest known lyres date from about 5,000 years ago in what is now Iraq and these were already complicated, finely-made structures. But here in Europe even Roman traces proved hard to locate.”

However, it is the location of the discovery which has amazed the archaeologists.

Dr Lawson added: “Here is an object which places the Hebrides, and by association the neighbouring mainlands, in a musical relationship not only with the rest of the Barbarian world but also with famous civilisations.”

Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop described it as an “incredible find”.

She added: “The evidence shows that Skye was a gathering place over generations and that it obviously had an important role to play in the celebration and ritual of life more than 2,000 years ago.”

Picture: PA. Fiona Hyslop with a replica of the 2,300-year-old bridge from a lyre.