heir own handiwork. The evident
idea of the Salic law was to allow woman a marriage portion only, and
as soon as she was safely bestowed upon some neighbouring group of
people, neither she nor her children had any further claim upon the
parent group.

Great cruelty was evident in the treatment of female slaves. According
to the laws of Athelstan, if one of these were convicted of theft, she
should in punishment be burned alive by eighty other such slaves. A
similar example of stern discipline is afforded by the ecclesiastical
provision, occurring no less than three times, that, if a woman scourged
her slave to death, she should do penance. It is little wonder that
under these conditions the female slaves would sing in a rather forced
manner, if at all, and the women themselves would hardly indulge in the
gentle art of composing music.

The early Christian Church, too, afforded no encouragement for women to
exert their musical abilities. When the earliest meetings occurred in
the catacombs, the female members of the congregation took their part in
singing the hymns, but, when organized choirs were formed, they were
allowed no place. The singing-schools founded in Rome by the Popes
Sylvester I. and Hilary, at the end of the fourth century, were devoted
solely to the training of male voices. In describing the earlier music,
St. John Chrysostom says: "The psalms which we sing unite all the voices
in one, and the canticles arise harmoniously in unison. Young and old,
rich and poor, women, men, slaves, and citizens, all of us have formed
but one melody together." But the custom of permitting women to join
with men in the singing was abolished by the Synod of Antioch in the
year 379.

In the music of the Celtic and Gaelic races, also, woman had no place.
Their songs, like their lives, were martial in character. The harpists
of Ireland and Wales, and the bagpipers of Scotland, were all men, and
they made strict rules about the admission of new members to their
guilds. Even among the early English minstrels, who devoted their powers
to the milder art of love-songs and Christmas carols, no women are to be
found. The wandering life of these bards and singers was too rude at
first to admit of participation by the gentler sex, and it was only
under more stable conditions of civilization that woman at last gained
the opportunity of showing and developing her talents.

With the advent of chivalry, she found herself at once in a mo