Simon Chadwick's
Early Gaelic Harp Emporium

The definitive history of the early Gaelic harp has yet to be written. These books are a start. From scholarly sources to popular overviews, they are all curious and worth collecting.

Click on a title to read more about it and, if applicable, for ordering information from the Emporium

Robert Bruce Armstrong
The Irish and The Highland Harps
David Douglas, Edinburgh, 1904
Still the best technical study of the extant historical Gaelic harps. 

Nora Joan Clark
The Story of the Irish Harp
North Creek Press, USA, 2003
A much expanded version of a series of articles originally published in the 1970s.

Alan J. Fletcher
Drama and the Performing Arts in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland: A Repertory of Sources and Documents from the Earliest Times until c.1642
D. S. Brewer, 2000
A comprehensive collection of source texts dealing with harpers and other arts.

John Gunn
An Historical Enquiry respecting the Performance on the Harp in the Highlands of Scotland
Archibald Constable, Edinburgh, and John Murray, London, 1807
A quaint analysis of Scotland's two surviving medieval harps, their playing and music.

John Magee
The Heritage of the Harp
Linen Hall library, Belfast, 1992
Harping activity in late 18th and early 19th Century Belfast.

Richard Hayward
The Story of the Irish Harp
A. Guinness, 1954
A brief illustrated introduction. 

Joan Rimmer
The Irish Harp
Mercier Press, Cork, 1969
A key source text, though rather dated now.

Keith Sanger & Alison Kinnaird
Tree of Strings - Crann nan Teud
Kinmor Music, Scotland, 1992
History of harps in Scotland from earliest times right up to the modern revival.

George Stevens
Historical Notes on the Irish harp: Its History, Players and Technique
Self Published, 1994
A useful and readable overiew of the early Irish harp

Christine Y Delyn
Cláirseach, la harpe Irlandaise: aux origines de la harpe celtique
Édition Hent Telenn Breizh, 1998
Includes fringe subjects like Ogham, "sacred" geometry, myth and legend.

Gráinne Yeats
The Harp of Ireland
Belfast Harpers' Bicentenary Ltd, 1992
The story of the 1792 Belfast Harp Festival, the harpers who played there and the work of Edward Bunting.

 

Simon Chadwick