Irish Harp Tradition

The old Irish harp, the cláirseach, was strung with brass wire and played with long fingernails against the strings, which gives a bell-like ring quite unlike the nylon-strung concert or folk harp. Harpers held high status in Gaelic society, travelling between houses and attached to noble families, and the tradition survived into the eighteenth century with Turlough O'Carolan, blind and itinerant, composing over two hundred pieces still played. It then died: the last generation of wire-strung players was gathered at the Belfast Harp Festival in 1792, where the young organist Edward Bunting wrote down what they played, and that transcription is much of what survives. Revival from the twentieth century onward has been partly reconstruction from Bunting and from surviving instruments. UNESCO listed Irish harping in 2019. The Brian Boru harp in Trinity College, from around the fifteenth century, is the emblem's original.

What you actually see

• The Brian Boru harp - the fifteenth-century instrument at Trinity, and the emblem's source.
• The wire strings - brass, played with fingernails, ringing rather than plucked.
• The 1792 transcriptions - Bunting's notes from the last old harpers.
• The O'Carolan repertoire - over two hundred pieces still in circulation.

When to go

Any time. The Trinity harp is displayed with the Book of Kells. Harp festivals run in summer, including at Termonfeckin and O'Carolan events in Roscommon and Leitrim.

Honest expectations

Wire-strung harping is rare - most harps you will hear at sessions or weddings are nylon-strung folk harps, a different instrument. The Trinity harp is seen through glass as part of a ticketed exhibition.

Nearby

Trinity College is in central Dublin; harp festivals move around the country.