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 NOTES 
 
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 OLD CROSS 
 
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 CANNA 
 
 
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 By JOHN CARGILL 
 
 Monument Designer with Chas. G. Blake €r Co. 
 
 Chicago 
 
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 NOTES ON THE OLD CROSS AT CANNA 
 
 Some time ago the "writer made a stud^ of the 
 **Musical Angles*" relating to their supposed use fcp 
 the old Irish designers. 
 
 This, happily^, lead to the thought: If the monks 
 employed the intervals of the musical string to fix the 
 outlines of monuments; they would also be likely to 
 use these intervals in the planning of ornament, and 
 possibly in such a manner as to indicate melodies. 
 
 This thought, the musical idea, led to a review 
 of Celtic ornament, part of the results of which it 
 is the object of this paper to present. 
 
 In 
 
 ') i Copyright: 1916: By John Cargill 
 
 ) 
 
Page Two 
 
 THE OLD CROSS ON THE ISLAND OF 
 
 CANNA. 
 
 This monument, which probably dates from the 
 10th Century, is located in an old cemetery, situated 
 in the bottom of a narrow glen, near the center of 
 the small island of Canna. This island is one of 
 several which form the parish of Small Isles off the 
 coast of Invernesshire, Scotland. 
 
 Although erected on Scotch territory, this cross 
 was probably designed and built by the Irish, as its 
 
Page Three 
 
 principal sculptures come under that class of sacred 
 subjects so constantly used by them in decorating 
 
 ^ their crosses. The carved reliefs on the Scotch 
 crosses generally represent scenes considered as taken 
 from civil life. 
 
 In the upper Zoomorphic panel, on the front of 
 the shaft, the crossed animals are supposed to repre¬ 
 sent the panther, which here would typify the Resur¬ 
 rection of Christ. 
 
 In the early Middle Ages the people had a Chris¬ 
 tian symbolism founded on the habits of animals. 
 All this was explained in works called “Bestiaries” 
 or “Books of Beasts,” which contained stories of the 
 lion, the lizard, the charadrius, the pelican, the 
 
 f phoenix, etc. These stories formed the basis of 
 Christian allegories. Only fragments of one Bestiary 
 in the English language now remain. “This was 
 probably translated” says J. Romilly Allen, “From 
 Latin into Saxon rhyme of the same character as 
 Caedmon’s metrical paraphrase of the Scriptures.” 
 
 The following lines from the poem of the Panther, 
 as given in this Saxon Bestiary, appear to have in¬ 
 spired the sculptor of the panel at Canna, mentioned 
 above: 
 
 / 
 
 *'When the bold animal 
 rises up 
 
 gloriously endowed^ 
 on the third day 
 suddenly from sleeps 
 a sound comes 
 of voices sweetest 
 
 f through the wild beast's mouth." 
 
 I 
 
 •'< 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
Page Four 
 
 If we may be allowed to define “voices sweetest” 
 as melody or singing, it will appear as if the de¬ 
 signer intended these interlaced lines to symbolize 
 melodies. The subjects in the two lower panels 
 present antitheses of the song idea, for here we have 
 discord and strife, as witnessed by the hold the 
 dragons have on each other. The panther and the 
 dragon then, considered as parts of one composition, 
 illustrate the power of sacred song to overcome evil. 
 Engel writes: “The notion that musical sound is a 
 safeguard against the influence of evil spirits has 
 been common to many nations.” 
 
 Now, if, at either panther, we trace along the line 
 which springs from the animal’s mouth and count 
 each intersection where this ornamental line crosses 
 itself or other ornamental line as a musical note, and 
 arrange the resulting progression of notes as a song, 
 we may feel assured we are simply carrying out the 
 old artist’s intention. (See Figs. 1 and 2, Pages 
 Five and Six.) 
 
 It is well to briefly state here what has been said 
 in regard to music and material form, questions 
 brought up by the musical interpretation of this orna¬ 
 ment. “Motion in music,” Helmholtz practically 
 remarks, “may imitate motion in space.” Dr. Clarke 
 writes: “All the arts, although starting from dif¬ 
 ferent points, dealing with dissimilar materials, and 
 differing totally in subject matter, meet at last on 
 this common ground of form or composition.” 
 
 It is known that certain well ordered ornamental 
 arabesques are similar in construction to musical fig¬ 
 ures, but it is not generally understood that inter¬ 
 laced ornament was occasionally used by the Celtic 
 monks to symbolize tonal progressions. 
 
Page Five 
 
 The theory that the monks intended this line work 
 to symbolize tone, the writer believes, is proved by 
 their art ideals, which were, in a measure, founded 
 upon doctrines analogous to those held by Pytha¬ 
 goras. 
 
 With the Pythagoreans the tonal art was but a 
 part of the greater art of music, which included what 
 may be termed “Form music,” dealing with space, 
 as well as audible music, dealing with tone. 
 
 To this school, Naumann says: “Number, tone, 
 and the harmony of the universe were identical.” 
 
 No, 1 No, 2 
 
 THE PANTHERS 
 At an Enlarged Scale. 
 
Page Six 
 
 The lines Fa, Sol, La, etc., are drawn through the intersec¬ 
 tions of the ornamental line to assist in the reading. 
 
 On the staff the line running between the two points of the 
 clef is Ut, or Do, also Middle C. 
 
 This ornamental line considered as notation, al¬ 
 though lacking the essentials of modern scores, is yet 
 on a par with the earliest attempts at musical writing 
 which left much for the singer to interpret. 
 
 As Celtic art reached its highest stage during the 
 darkest period in the history of Church song, so we 
 can do no better than consider these notes under the 
 light given by their contemporary song—the Gre¬ 
 gorian chant. 
 
 The Gregorian melodies were composed in dif¬ 
 ferent scales or modes, each having its special char- ^ 
 acter, as grave, solemn, devotional, expressed in its 
 tonality. 
 
Page Seven 
 
 The notation from Canna, which is from a symbol 
 of the Resurrection, evidently was intended to give 
 Easter songs of a joyful character. 
 
 Now the melodies composed in the Lydian, or 
 fifth, Gregorian mode. Fa to Fa, have a joyful char¬ 
 acter, and so it is the appropriate mode in which to 
 arrange the notes from Canna. 
 
 The chants in the Gregorian modes are also char¬ 
 acterized by the succession of certain notes (differ¬ 
 ent in each mode) called the principal chord. 
 
 The principal chord in the fifth mode is Fa-La- 
 Do, it is the prominence of these notes which give 
 the distinctive tonal character to the songs composed 
 in this mode. 
 
 That these songs from Canna were composed in 
 the fifth mode. Fa to Fa, appears evident. They 
 
 
 The notes with a stem should be sung a little louder and 
 longer than the others. 
 
Page Eight 
 
 each sound the principal chord of this mode, Fa- 
 La-Do, at or near their beginning. Separately, 
 these character tones, counting Fa in each octave, 
 occur thirty-eight times in one song, and thirty-two 
 in the other, numbers sufficient to give the desired 
 tone quality, and prove the intelligent musical inten¬ 
 tion of Canna’s unknown author. 
 
 The fifth mode, when Si is flatted, becomes the 
 modern major mode, and as Hurley writes,^ “Pieces 
 in the fifth mode, with Si natural are very rare,” so 
 it is also proper to arrange the Canna notation in the 
 modern major scale. 
 
 In the syllabic chants the length of the notes is 
 determined by the words and syllables to which they 
 are set. In the songs from Canna, which are inde¬ 
 pendent of text, there can be no objection if the notes 
 are given the same length, but whether their division 
 into measures of seven is equally permissible, may be 
 questioned. These problems, however, are beyond 
 the scope of this paper as its purpose is simply to call 
 attention to the notes on the old cross at Canna. 
 
 The End 
 
 ^Gregorian ChanU Edmund G. Hurley