Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/521

H A K P 489 wore than 3000 years old, paintings discovered by the traveller Bruce (fig. 1), there are varieties that permit us to bind the whole, from the simplest bow-form to the almost triangular harp, into one family (see fig. 2). The Egyptian harp had no front pillar, and it, being strung with catgut, the tension and pitch must necessarily have been low. The harps above - mentioned depicted in the tomb at Thebes, assumed from the players to be more than 6 feet high, have not many strings, the one, according to Wilkinson, hav ing ten, the other thirteen. What the accordance was Fig. 1. of these strings it would be to no satisfaction to follow Burney and others in trying to recover. We must be con tent with the knowledge that the old Egyptians possessed harps in principle like our own, the largest having pedestals upon which they bestowed a wealth of decoration, as if to show how much they prized them. The ancient Assyrians had harps like those of Egypt in being without a front pillar, but differing from them in having the sound-body uppermost, in which we find the early use of soundholes ; while the lower portion was a bar to which the strings were tied and by means of which the tuning was apparently effected. What the Hebrew harp was, whether it followed the Egyptian or the Assyrian, we do not know. That King David played upon the harp as coin- manly depicted is rather a modem idea. Mediaeval art ists frequently gave King David tha psaltery, a hori zontal stringed instrument from which has gradually de veloped the modern piano. The Hebrew " kinnor" may have been a kind of trigonon, a triangular stringed instru ment between a small harp and a psaltery, probably sounded by a plectrum, or, as advocated by Dr Stainer in his essay on the music of the Bible, a kind of lyre. The earliest records that we possess of the Celtic race, whether Gaelic or Cymric, give the harp a prominent place and hirpists peculiar veneration and distinction. The names for the harp are, however, quite different from the Teutonic. The Irish " clairseach," the Highland Scotch "chrsach," the Welsh, Cornish, Breton, "telyn," "telein," "telen," show no etymological kinship to the other Euro pean names. The first syllable in clairseach or clarsach is derived from the Gaelic " clar," a board or table (sound board), while the first syllable of telyn is distinctly Old Welsh, and has a tensile meaning ; thus resonance supplies the one idea, tension the other. The literature of these Celtic harps may be most directly found 111 Banting s_ Ancient Music of Ireland, Dublin, 1840; Gunn s Historical E nquiry respecting the Performance on the Harp in the Highlands of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1807 ; and E. Jones s Musica t, and Poetical Memoirs of the Welsh Bards, London, 1784. The treatises of AValker, Dalyell, and others may also be consulted ; but in all these authorities due care must be taken of the bias of patriot ism, and the delusive aim to reconstruct much that we must be con tent to receive as only vaguely indicated in records and old monu ments. There is, however, one early Irish monument about which there can be no mistake, the harp upon a cross belonging to the ancient church of Ullard near Kilkenny, the date of which cannot je later than 830 ; the sculpture is rude, but the instrument is learly shown by the drawing in Bunting s work to have no front lillar. This remarkable structural likeness to the old harps of Egypt and Assyria may be accidental, but permits the plausible lypothesia of Eastern descent. The oldest specimen of the beautiful briu. the Irish harp is now recognized by, with gracefully curved rout pillar and sweep of neck (the latter known as the harmonic curve), is the famous harp in Trinity College, Dublin, the possession of which has been attributed to King Brian Boiroimhe. From this mythic ownership Dr Petrie (see essay in Bunting) has delivered it ; but he can only deduce the age from the ornamentation and heraldry, which fix its late in the 14th century or a little later. There is a cast of it in South Kensington Museum, accurately described in the cata logue by Mr Carl Engel. The next oldest in the Highlands of Scotland, the Clarsach Lumanach, or Lament s Clarschoe, belonging, with another of later date, to the old Perthshire family of Robertson of Lude. Both are described in detail by Gunn. This Lament harp was taken by a lady of that family from Argyleshire about 1460, on her marriage into the family of Lude. It had about thirty strings tuned singly, but the scale Was sometimes doubled in pairs of unisons like lutes and other con- Irish (Dalway) Harp, temporary instruments. The Dalway harp in Ireland (fig. 3) in scribed "Ego sum Regina Cithararmn," and dated 1621, appears to have had pairs of strings in the centre only. These were of brass wire, and played with the pointed finger nails. The Italian contemporary "Arpa Doppia" was entirely upon the duplex principle, but with gut strings played by the fleshy ends of the fingers. When Bunting met at Belfast in 1792 as many Irish harpers as could be at that late date assembled, he found the compass of their harps to comprise thirty notes which were tuned diatonically in the key of G, under certain circumstances transposable to C and rarely to D, the scales being the major of these keys. The harp first appeared in the coat of arms of Ireland in the reign of Henry VIII. ; and some years after in a map of ] 567 preserved in a volume of State Papers, we find it truly drawn according to the outlines of the national Irish instrument. References to the Highlands of Scotland are of neces sity included with Ireland ; and in both we find another name for the harp, viz., "emit." Bunting particularly mentions the "cinnard emit" (harp with a high head) and the " crom cruit" (the curved harp). In the Ossianic MSS. of the Dean of Lisinore (1512) the word "cnvt" occurs several times, and in Keill M Alpine s Gaelic Dictionary (1832), which gives the dialect of Islay, closely related to that of Ulster, the word "cruit" is rendered "harp." In Irish of the 8th and 9th centuries (Zeuss) "cithara" is always glossed by " crot." True the modern Welsh "crwth" is not a harp ; but the expression of Fortunatus, " Chrotta Britanna canat," has been too readily accepted as meaning the half-fiddle half-lyre which also bears the name of "crwth" or crowd. " An old Welsh harp, not triple strung, exists, which bears a great resemblance to the Irish harp in neck, soundboard, and soundholes. The inference is fair that this was the form, although dimensions may have materially differed, of the Irish " crom cruit," while the triple strung harp with its elevated neck might be the form of the " cinnard emit. " But this does not imply de rivation of the harp of Wales from that of Ireland or the reverse. There is really no good historical evidence, and there may have been a common or distinct origin on which ethnology only can throw light. The Welsh like the Irish harp was often an hereditary instrument to be preserved with great care and veneration, and used by the bards of the family, who were alike the poet- musicians and historians. A slave was not allowed to touch a harp, and it was exempted by the Welsh laws from seizure for debt. The old Welsh harp appears to have been at one time strung with horsehair, and by the Eisteddfod laws the pupil spent his noviciate of three years in the practice of a harp with that stringing. The comparatively modern Welsh triple harp (fig. 4) is always strung with gut. It has a rising neck as before stated, and three rows of strings, the outer rows tuned diatonic, the centre one chromatic for the sharps and flats. Jones gives it 98 strings and a compass of 5 octaves and one note, from violoncello XL 62 FIG. 4. Welsh

Triple Harp.