A recurring feature of early Gaelic harps is the presence of two strings tuned tothe same note in the tenor range. These adjacent unisons break the diatonic run. This page gathers evidence and citations which describe and name this phenomenon.

The Scottish antiquarian John Bell, collecting information about the early Gaelic harp tradition in the mid 19th century from the harper Patrick Byrne, wrote in his notebook:

Another 19th century collector, Dr. James MacDonnell, also reports technical terms from Byrne:

Freagrach comhluighe and gilly caomhluighe appear in Bunting's tables. MacDonnell also writes:

MacDonnell describes instruments belonging to other 18th century Irish harpers, counting their stringing and tuning by reference to the unison strings:

Edward Bunting in his 1840 book includes the word caomhluighe in his tables of Irish harp terminology. For the online edition of the table dealing with this term, including some notes by Colm Ó Baoill, click here.

Bunting gives a slightly different form of the word a few pages later, this time without reference to the unisons:

The term, and its explanations, were noted by Edward Bunting in tuning and gamut charts in his field manuscripts from the 1790s. This is my hand copy from Queens University Belfast, MS4 12 f18v, which appears to be a source for the above printed examples. The unison Gs are labelled "caomhliughe".

For more info see the Irish Terms ms page. Thanks to Ann Heymann for showing me this notebook page.

In other notebook charts, Bunting uses the word 'sisters' to label the two unison g strings, e.g. ms29 page 81 (f38r). Below is my hand copy; you can view a low-resolution facsimile of ms29 p.81 at Queens University website.

Underneath it says 'harp always tuned by the Sisters'

Other charts which include the term 'sisters' can be seen on ms29 p.150, p.155 & p.156; a chart showing the unisons but without names is on p.153.

William McMurchy, a Scottish Gaelic poet, piper and harper in Kintyre in the 18th century, left many interesting manuscripts including a set of measurements of a Gaelic harp:

In about 1690, the Cambridge scholar James Talbot compiled measurements and descriptions of many different musical instruments. His descriptions of Irish harps mention the unison strings:

A story from South Ulster, probably from the 17th century, describes tuning of a cláirseach, using the word cobhlach to decribe some part of the tuning:

A poem attributed to ‘Earl Gerald’, a 14th century aristocratic Irish poet, starts as follows:

In the medieval tale of Deirdre and the Sons of Uisneach, there is a section where Deidre speaks in poetry, about the sweetness of the singing of her dead companions. The wording is obscure but it seems to be talking about deep notes, middle notes and high notes, with coblach used for the middle ones:

Perhaps the earliest attestation of this word in a musical context comes in commentaries on a line of the poem written on the death of St Columba, which says that Ireland without Columba is like a church without an abbot, or a harp without ceis. The commentator is trying (not very succesfully) to explain what the mystery word ceis means.

Note: this page (and others on this site) uses old Irish script and lenition. If you see garbled text or error characters you might try downloading a Unicode font that includes characters for dotted consonants. Advice can be found here at SMO. For the Gaelic script I suggest downlaoding Vincent Morley's Bunchló. Any problems let me know.