When the great gathering, or Parliament, was held periodically at Tara, County Meath, there was minstrelsy in the banquet-hall after every day’s business. The last Parliament, or Feis, of Tara, was held in 560 under Fergus; and never more after that gathering was the “harp heard in Tara’s halls.”
An Irish saga of the Seventh Century describes nine Irish harpers as having “gray winding cloaks, with brooches of gold, circlets of pearls round their heads, rings of gold around their thumbs, torques[89] of gold around their ears, and torques of silver around their throats.”
Trinity College, Dublin, owns a harp that is supposed to have belonged to King Brian, “Brian Boru,” the hero, who was slain in the hour of victory over the Danes at Clontarf near Dublin in 1014. His harp was rescued by his son, who took it to Rome and gave it to the Pope. It is the old hand-harp of the minstrels.
In 1185 Giraldus, appointed by King Henry II tutor to his son, Prince John, accompanied the latter to Ireland. On his return he wrote a book describing the remarkable things he had seen in that country and paid the following tribute to the Irish harpers:
“The cultivation of instrumental music by this people I find worthy of commendation. In this their skill is beyond all comparison superior to that of any nation I have ever seen; for their music is not slow and solemn, as in the instrumental music of Britain to which we are accustomed; but the sounds are rapid and articulate, yet at the same time sweet and pleasing. It is wonderful how, in such precipitate rapidity of the fingers the musical proportions are preserved, and by their art, faultless throughout, in the midst of the most complicated modulations and most intricate arrangements of notes; by a velocity so pleasing, a regularity so diversified, a concord so discordant, the melody is preserved harmonious and perfect; and whether a passage, or transition, is performed in a sequence of fourths or fifths, it is always begun in a soft and delicate manner, and ended in the same, so that all may be perfected in the sweetness of delicious sounds. They enter on and again leave their modulations with so much subtlety and the vibrations of the smaller strings of the treble sport with so much articulation and brilliancy, along with the deep notes of the bass; they delight with so much delicacy and soothe so charmingly, that the great excellence of their art appears to lie in their accomplishing all this with the greatest seeming ease and without the least appearance of effort, or art.”
The Welsh harpists learned from the Irish, as Wharton, in his History of English Poetry, testifies: “There is sufficient evidence to prove that the Welsh bards were early connected with the Irish. Even so late as the Eleventh Century the Welsh bards received instruction in the bardic profession (music and poetry) from Ireland.”
The typical harp of the Welsh was called telyn; but it does not seem to have differed much from the Irish harp. Harp competitions were a feature of the Welsh Eisteddfod that corresponded to the Irish Feis. In the Highlands of Scotland the harp was called Clarsach. It is mentioned in almost every poem, ballad, song, and story. Everybody played the harp; even the children eagerly tried to sweep the strings with their little fingers. In the Poem of Trathal the hero’s wife remains at home. “Two children with their fair locks are at her knees. They bend their ears above the harp, as she touches with her fair hands the trembling strings. She stops. They take the harp themselves, but cannot find the sound they admired. ‘Why,’ they ask ‘does it not answer us? Show us the string where dwells the song.’ She bids them search for it till she returns. Their little fingers wander among the wires.” There was hardly a household of the Highland chieftains which did not have bard, or harper; and in many old castles the “harper’s seat,” “the harper’s window,” or “the harper’s gallery” is shown with pride to visitors.
Playing the harp was a general accomplishment.
George Buchanan, in his History of Scotland, published in 1565, says the people “delight very much in music, especially in harps, of their own sort, some of which are strung with brass wire and some with intestines of animals. They play on them either with their nails grown long, or with a pectrum. Their only ambition seems to be to ornament their harps with silver and precious stones. The lower ranks, instead of gems, deck theirs with crystal. They sing poetical compositions celebrating the exploits of their valiant men. Their language is that of the ancient Gauls, a little altered.”