![]() ![]() ![]() At the time, I knew nothing about the long history of Irish harps. I don’t know how to play the harp but it’s such a cool instrument that all I had to do was touch some strings and it sounded beautiful. It was the kind you can hold on your lap, not the huge kind that you have to set on the floor. I wish I had a picture but it looked something like this: This summer in my class on Irish mythology, folklore, and music I got to hold and play an Irish harp. Egan took the shape of the medieval Irish harp but altered the instrument with elements of the orchestral harp: gut strings instead of metal strings and, to quote Simon Chadwick, Honorary Secretary of the Historical Harp Society of Ireland, “mechanical semitone-fretting mechanisms.” As I can figure out, that gives you more versatility in terms of the notes you can play. The modern “Irish Harp,” while it looks like the medieval harps, is actually the 19 th-century invention of John Egan, though it draws on the ancient Irish harping tradition. Made of oak and willow, the Trinity College Harp has been reconstructed at least twice, first because it was falling apart from age, next because it had been taken apart for examination, so it might not look now like it did in 1500. In reality, the harp postdates the death of Brian Boru by about 400 years, but I think the existence of this legend shows that the harp is a powerful symbol of Irishness, if it’s considered worth connecting to one of Ireland’s most famous kings. The third is the Irish 14 th or 15 th-century Trinity College Harp also known as the “Brian Boru Harp.” A legend has arisen around this harp claiming that after Brian Boru’s death, his son brought the instrument to the Vatican where it remained until a 16 th-century pope gave it to Henry VIII. Two of these are Scottish: the Queen Mary Harp (Clàrsach na Banrìgh Màiri) which was allegedly a gift from Mary Stuart, and the Lamont Harp. Only three Celtic Harps from the Middle Ages remain. At the very latest, Irish harps had appeared by the 11 th century, as shown by this cute little guy on the Breac Maedoc shrine:Įarly harps were made of four pieces of wood held together not by glue but by the tension exerted by the strings on the joints between the pieces of wood. The earliest known possible depictions of harps in Ireland date to the 8 th century but we don’t know if those are the type of harp that came to be known as the “Irish harp” or if they’re even harps at all. The unmistakable visual parallel between Bahram Gur’s weapon and Azada’s musical instrument is made explicit in the text of another version of the story, written by the 12th-century poet Nizami.The dude is the President of Ireland, Michael Higgins. The scene comes from the Book of Kings ( Shahnama), the 10th-century Persian poet Firdausi’s epic poem, and thus the two figures on camelback represent the Sasanian prince Bahram Gur and the harpist Azada. Behind him, the harpist grasps the frame of her instrument with her right hand, curling the fingers of her left hand to pluck the harp strings. The hunter holds his bow with his right hand, and he wraps the fingers of his left hand around the string of his bow, withdrawing his arm to release an arrow. Painted on the inside of a ceramic bowl made in Kashan (in modern-day Iran), a hunter and a harpist ride together on the back of a racing camel. It is not only in medieval sacred art that harp music elicits physical, emotional, and supernatural responses. ![]()
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