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from Edward Bunting, The Ancient Music of Ireland (Dublin 1840), page 20: The different kinds of Irish harps.
Irish cromchruit
spoken by Gráinne Yeats
Scottish Gaelic crom-chruit
spoken by Tony Dilworth
Click the play button to hear it spoken. help
A typical ‘large low headed’ harp:
The Castle Otway harp
Kept at
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
34 strings, longest 77cm
Click here for more information
Crom-chuit ('in English characters' Crom-Cruit) - The down-bending harp
There are two misspellings here, the correct form being cromchruit, a compound of crom, 'bent down, stooped', and cruit. Possibly Bunting is here making the same distinction as Joan Rimmer does in The Irish Harp (Cork, 1969), pp.75-77, between the "large low-headed harp" and the "large high-headed harp".
Colm Ó Baoill 2002