or REGALS, a kind of musical instrument, consisting of several sticks bound together, only separated by beads. It is tolerably harmonious, being well struck with a ball at the end of a stick. Such is the account which Graffineau gives of this instrument. Skinner, upon the authority of an old English dictionary, represents it as a clavichord, or clavicord; possibly founding his opinion on the nature of the office of the tuner of the regals, who still subsists in the establishment of the king's chapel at St James's, and whose business is to keep the organ of the chapel royal in tune; and not knowing that such wind instruments as the organ need frequent tuning, as well as the clavichord and other stringed instruments. Sir Henry Spelman derives the word rigoll from the Italian rigabello, a musical instrument, anciently used in churches instead of the organ. Walther, in his description of the regal, makes it to be a reed-work in an organ, with metal and also wooden pipes and bellows adapted to it. And he adds, that the name of it is supposed to be owing to its having been presented by the inventor to some king.—From an account count of the regal used in Germany, and other parts of Europe, it appears to consist of pipes and keys on one side, and the bellows and wind-chest on the other. We may add, that Lord Bacon (Nat. Hist. cent. ii. § 102.) distinguishes between the regal and organ, in a manner which shows them to be instruments of the same class. Upon the whole, there is reason to conclude, that the regal or rigoll was a pneumatic, and not a stringed instrument.

Merfenius relates, that the Flemings invented an instrument, les regales de bois, consisting of 17 cylindrical pieces of wood, decreasing gradually in length, so as to produce a succession of tones and semitones in the diatonic series, which had keys, and was played on as a spinet; the hint of which, he says, was taken from an instrument, in use among the Turks, consisting of 12 wooden cylinders, of different lengths, strung together, which being suspended and struck with a stick, having a ball at the end, produced music. Hawkins's Hist. Mus. vol. ii. p. 449.