Swithin," in which the description occurs, to Elphegus, Bishop of Winchester, by whose order the organ was erected, about the middle of the tenth century.[1]
To quote the lengthy account left us by the good monk,[2] and the absurd deductions that have been made from it would occupy more time than we could spare; suffice it to say that Mr. Wackerbarth, in his "Music and the Anglo-Saxons," states that he believes that it possessed registers or stops, and a key-board furnished with all the chromatic semi-tones! Mr. Arthur Ashpitel, a modern writer and archæologist, believes all this, and much more. He thinks it had "forty stops!" and after summing up his opinions, concludes with this remarkable passage:—"The instrument, therefore, would be the size of that mag-
