On or around 1st April 1845, this and other photographs were taken of Byrne by the pioneering photographers David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. Byrne was appearing in one of the "tableaux vivants" at the Waverly Ball, Edinburgh, as "The last minstrel striking his harp to the last lay". Hill later wrote of the "costume, which, made of a blanket and plaid shows how simply one might get up pictures of the old world". Byrne's harp is one of the large wire-strung harps made by Egan for the Irish Harp Society. Photo taken from Robert Bruce Armstrong, "The Irish and Highland Harps", David Douglas, Edinburgh, 1904
© Simon Chadwick 2005 - part of the history of the Gaelic harp, at earlygaelicharp.info