The Clàrsach: The Scottish Harp

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The documentary evidence for harpers is far richer than older histories admitted. Keith Sanger and Alison Kinnaird, in Tree of Strings (1992), assembled hundreds of references from the Treasurer's Accounts, Exchequer Rolls, rentals, testaments, kirk session minutes and Gaelic verse. Those records are the strongest part of this article. The weak points are elsewhere. The carved stones are worn and open to interpretation. The dates and origins of the surviving harps have been revised more than once. Much of the folklore about famous harpers was written down a century or more after their deaths, often by people who confused one harper with another. Above all, the music was not written down by the harpers themselves. What survives was noted by lute players, fiddlers and collectors, and today's clàrsach is a reconstruction, not an unbroken line. Tree of Strings also has a point of view: it argues for Scottish origins wherever the evidence allows. Its interpretations are labelled as such below, and newer research is given where it differs.

Legend and enchantment

traditional In Scottish folklore the harp is an instrument of enchantment. A tale told on both Eigg and Skye says music came to the Western Isles when a boy found a harp floating in the sea and his mother sold her soul to a practitioner of the black arts so he could play it. Near Tychat on Loch Ness a rock called An Clàrsach was said to be where Satan sat and harped while witches danced. Ballads use harping to cast sleep: in "Glenkindie" the harper can harp "a fish out o saut water", and in "The Twa Sisters" a harp strung with a drowned girl's hair names her murderer at a feast. Gaelic tales from Colonsay and Barra tell of murderous harpers who lull warriors to sleep, and an Islay tale has a Scottish champion out-play the best harpers of Ireland.

established Some of these stories touch real events. Hector Boece's history of 1527 has a harper lull a Pictish king to sleep so assassins can kill him. Sanger and Kinnaird suggest the details echo the real murder of Angus Óg of the Isles by an Irish harper around 1490, described below. A harper's real duties in a noble household did include playing his patron to sleep.

shared Sanger and Kinnaird stress that the harp was an elite instrument. In their words, "The Scottish harp was never a 'folk' instrument." It belonged to trained professionals and to the aristocracy, not to the croft or bothy, which helps explain why it vanished when patronage did.

The Pictish stones

established The earliest images of harps in Scotland are carved on early medieval stones. Two crosses on Iona, St Oran's and St Martin's, both of the 8th century, show four-sided harps of the kind also carved on Irish crosses. Every other early Scottish carving shows a three-cornered, triangular frame harp, with a forepillar bracing the frame. Most of these stand in former Pictish territory in eastern Scotland.

established The main examples are these. The Nigg cross-slab in Easter Ross, of the late 8th or 9th century, shows a triangular harp with no player, as a symbol of King David, with about seven strings. The Dupplin Cross near Forteviot shows a seated harper on a high-backed chair with a large harp resting on the ground. Historic Environment Scotland dates the cross to around 800, from its inscription naming King Constantine son of Fergus; Tree of Strings had placed it in the 10th century, so the newer date makes it one of the earliest. A stone at Monifieth in Angus, of the 9th or 10th century, shows a seated harper with an eight-stringed harp standing on the floor. At Aldbar, also in Angus, a sturdier harp is carved as a David symbol. A cross-slab at Ardchattan in Argyll shows a harper with a triple-pipe player, and a 10th-century stone at Lethendy in Perthshire pairs a standing harper with a triple piper.

established Later Scottish carvings show smaller harps closer to the surviving instruments. A capital in Iona Abbey, probably 15th century, shows an angel with a small harp. A late medieval grave slab at Keills in Knapdale, drawn in 1873 when still clear, showed a harp decorated like the Queen Mary and Trinity College harps, with what may be a tuning key. Its inscription names a man and his son Allan, possibly of a harper family serving the MacNeills of Gigha. A worn slab from Kilchoan (Glasvin) in Skye shows a kneeling harper.

shared Sanger and Kinnaird drew a bold conclusion. No triangular frame harp appears on Irish stone until the late 12th century, or on Irish metalwork until the Shrine of St Mogue in the 11th. They argued that the triangular harp therefore began among the Picts and perhaps the other British peoples of Scotland, that the early Pictish harps were large, lightly built, floor-standing and possibly strung with horsehair, and that the Gaels later made the instrument smaller and stronger to carry wire strings. They also suggested that British refugees took the harp, and the Welsh word telyn, to Wales. This is an argument from the surviving carvings, which are few and worn. It is not accepted by all scholars, and it should be presented as a theory. What is safe to say is that Scotland has the earliest clear images of the triangular frame harp in Europe.

shared One of their reasons is practical. As they put it, "it is very uncharacteristic for an instrument to shrink!" A tall, light Pictish harp could not have carried the tension of metal strings, so either the carvings are not realistic or the instrument changed in construction and stringing.

Cruit and clàrsach: the names

established The oldest Gaelic word for a stringed instrument is cruit. It seems at first to have covered several plucked instruments, and by about 1200 in Ireland it meant the triangular wire-strung harp. A player was a cruitire. A charter of David II dated 6 May 1346 confirms land in Carrick to Patrick, son of the late Michael the harper (citharista) of Carrick. The family's Gaelic name, Mac a' Chruiteir, survives as MacWhirter. They were probably hereditary harpers to the Earls of Carrick, the earldom that came to the Bruces.

established The word clàrsach is first found in a praise poem to a harp by the Irish poet Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh, dating from 1382–87 and preserved in the Book of the Dean of Lismore, compiled at Fortingall in Perthshire between 1512 and 1540. A 13th-century poem by the Scottish poet Giolla Brighde Albanach already speaks of the strings of a "willow board" (chlár shoileach, as Sanger and Kinnaird give it). Clàr means a board, and Sanger and Kinnaird suggest clàrsach may come from that phrase.

shared Scots records name clàrsach players almost as soon as the word appears in Ireland: Eugenio Klerscharch at Glassary in 1434 and Duncan Clarescheouch in Strathdon in 1438. Scottish Gaelic verse prefers clàrsach, while Irish sources prefer cruit, and most Irish uses of cláirseach come from Ulster. On this basis Sanger and Kinnaird, following John Bannerman, argue that clàrsach is a Scottish word carried to Ireland, perhaps by the West Highland galloglass mercenaries from about 1260. The case is reasonable but circumstantial.

established Gerald of Wales wrote around 1188 that Scotland used the cithara, tympanum and chorus, and that in many people's opinion Scotland had not only equalled Ireland in music but surpassed her. He had never been to Scotland. The tiompán, a lyre, is well attested in Ireland; in Scotland it appears only in Irish contexts and in place-names such as Mam an Tiompain on Mull.

established The harper had a defined place in Gaelic learned society. In Ireland a trained poet (file) composed, a reciter declaimed and a harper accompanied. In Scotland no reciter is recorded, and the roles blurred: a harper might also be a poet. The 15th-century Giolla Críost Brúilingeach, probably of the Galbraith harper family, composed a poem around 1458 asking the Irish lord Tomaltach MacDiarmada for a harp, and a later poem shows he got it. Rentals give a measure of status. In Kintyre in 1505 the MacMhuirich poets held eight merklands and the MacGhille Sheanaich harpers four.

Harp and clàrsach: two instruments

established Scotland had two kinds of harp. Gaelic Scotland used the wire-strung clàrsach. The Lowlands, like the rest of medieval Europe, generally used a lighter gut-strung harp. John Major wrote in 1521 that the "Wild Scots" played a harp "whose strings are of brass and not animal guts". George Buchanan, writing in Latin later in the century, said Highland harps were strung some with brass wire and some with gut, and that Highlanders decorated them with silver and precious stones, or crystal if they were poor. John Monipennie's English version of 1594 made the distinction explicit: the strings of the "Clairshoes" were brass wire and those of the "Harpes" were sinews.

established The royal Treasurer's Accounts keep the two apart. On 13 April 1501, "Pate harpar on the harp, Pate harper on the clarsach, James Mylson harpar, the Ireland clarsach, and an English harpar" were each paid 13 shillings. In general the gut harp appears in the Lowlands and on the east coast, the clàrsach in Highland places and the west.

Harpers at the royal court

shared A seal of Scone Abbey shows the inauguration of Alexander III on 13 July 1249. Behind the king's poet stands a smaller figure with a triangular object at his shoulder. John Bannerman suggested this is the king's harper, helping the poet perform the inaugural ode.

established The first named royal harper is Master Elyas, called "the King of Scotland's harper" in 1278. After Alexander III's death he entered Edward I's service, and in 1296 Edward restored his lands in Perth and Fife. James de Cowpen, a Scottish herald known at the English court as "King Caupenny", is called "Roy de Copiny, harpour" in an English account of about 1300–07. In 1303, near Largo Bay in Fife, Edward I rewarded five Scottish harpers for playing to him. Robert I granted land to Thomas citharista, provost of Rutherglen in 1328–29, and David II rewarded harpers in Carrick, Forfar and Linlithgow.

established Walter Bower, abbot of Inchcolm, wrote in 1437 that James I was a master of many instruments and especially the harp, surpassing "even the Irish themselves". Bower was flattering a murdered king, and James learned his music during eighteen years of captivity in England, so his harp was probably a court harp rather than a clàrsach. A contemporary account of an evening at his court after his return describes the company "occupied at the playing of the chesse... yn syngyng, and pypyng, yn harpyng".

established The Treasurer's Accounts for James II and James III are lost, but a statute of James III in 1471 allowed only knights, minstrels and heralds to wear silk. The accounts survive for James IV (1488–1513), and they show harpers everywhere. The first is an unnamed harper at Linlithgow at Easter 1491. Regular court harpers included James Mylson, recorded from 1496, who in 1497 was granted the goods of a Perth goldsmith; Alexander Harper, paid from 1501 to 1508 and probably the Alexander Harper with property in Dunfermline; and the two Pates. In 1503 a drummer named William, known as Guilliam, was outlawed for killing a Patrick Harper, yet he went on playing at court and was pardoned in 1506. After 1504 the two Pates never again appear together.

established The MacBhreatnaich (Galbraith) family of clàrsach players came from Galloway. Martyn MacBhreatnaich, harper, held the lands of Clutag and Knockann near Wigtown from at least 1471; his son John took them over in 1489–90, and Rolland (the Scots form of Lachlann) received Knockann in 1506 and appeared at court from 1507. Duncan Campbell of Glenorchy wrote a mocking Gaelic "elegy" on a harper Lachlann MacBhreatnaich, accusing him of begging little dogs and ferrets from young ladies. Both men are thought to have died at Flodden in 1513, and after that date the family no longer held Knockann.

established Other harpers passed through the court with their patrons: the clàrsach players of MacLean and the Earl of Argyll in September 1506, the Bishop of Ross's harper, the Prior of Whithorn's clàrsach player, and in 1513 "Odonelis harpar", the harper of the Irish prince O'Donnell. James IV heard harpers on his travels at Linlithgow, Elgin, Dingwall and elsewhere, and clàrsach players at Dumbarton, Perth, Stirling, Balquhidder, Wigtown and Ayr. "Johne harpar with the ane hand" was paid in 1496 and 1497. The accounts often pay a harper together with a fiddler or drummer, which suggests small ensembles. In 1506–07 the king bought a leather case for a clàrsach.

established Flodden changed court music. Under James V the lute, fiddle and viol were in favour, and harpers appear only three times: "ane harper" in 1520, "ane Westland harper" in 1529 and "an Ireland Clairsochter" in 1533. There is no evidence that Mary, Queen of Scots, played the harp; she played the lute and virginals. During James VI's minority the Regent Morton kept two harpers, John Baxter and Robert Galbraith. In February 1574 Galbraith, "clairschear", was issued English broadcloth for a cloak, grey worsted for coat and breeches, silk braid and a hat. After 1603 the court moved to London, where Irish harpers were in fashion. Cormac MacDermott served Elizabeth I and then James from 1603 to 1618, and that marked the end of Scottish harpers at the royal court.

The surviving instruments

established Three medieval Gaelic harps survive. The Queen Mary and Lamont harps, long kept by the Robertsons of Lude in Perthshire, are in the National Museum of Scotland. The Trinity College harp, wrongly called the "Brian Boru harp", is in Dublin. Each has a soundbox hollowed from one block of wood and closed by a back panel, a curved forepillar thickened into a T-section for strength, and a heavy neck (harmonic curve) through which the tuning pins pass between brass bands. The tension of the wire strings held the joints together. Wear marks on the soundboxes show they were played on the left shoulder.

shared Tree of Strings dated all three to the mid to late 15th century and argued, from carved ornament matching West Highland grave slabs, that the Queen Mary and Trinity College harps came from the same West Highland workshop, perhaps near Keills and Kilmory in Knapdale under the Lords of the Isles. The book also said the two Edinburgh harps were made of hornbeam. That was later corrected: the 2015 reprint of the book notes that the museum's conservators and Karen Loomis established that both soundboxes are willow, and National Museums Scotland now describes the Queen Mary harp as hollowed from a single block of willow. The museum dates the Queen Mary harp to the 14th–15th centuries and calls it West Highland work; the National Library of Scotland reports a radiocarbon date in the 14th century; Loomis's study treats both harps as broadly 15th century. A single settled date should not be given.

shared The Queen Mary harp is the smaller and finer, about 80 cm tall with about 30 strings, carved with interlace, a lion, a griffin, a dragon and a unicorn, and traces of vermilion. Its link to Mary, Queen of Scots, rests on a Lude family tradition first published by John Gunn in 1807: that the queen gave it to Beatrix Gardyne during a hunting trip to Atholl in the 1560s. Beatrix did marry into the Robertson family, and the harp once carried added ornaments, but the royal gift is tradition, not record. The larger and plainer Lamont harp, with up to 32 strings and old metal repairs, is said to have come to Lude with a Lamont bride in the 15th century; Sanger and Kinnaird suggest it was a working professional's instrument. Both harps were lent to the Highland Society in 1805, when the Queen Mary harp was restrung, first with brass and then with gut, and played by the Swiss harpist Joseph Elouis. National Museums Scotland bought the Queen Mary harp at auction in 1904 from the estate of J.N.D. Steuart of Dalguise. These two harps have their own article in this series, which covers their making, dating and provenance in detail.

Harps in the Lowlands

established The first harper named in a Scottish source is Lowland. The Chronicle of Melrose, written around 1260, describes Adam of Lennox, porter of Old Melrose, who spent winter nights before the altar of the Virgin "playing upon the harp and singing songs which are called 'Motets'". He became abbot of Balmerino in Fife in 1252. His harp was probably a small gut-strung church harp.

established English records of 1290–96 list many harpers in Scotland, often with English names and lands near "harper" place-names on estates of Norman or Flemish lords: Rogier le Harpur of Home, Ughtred le Harpur of Berwick, John le Harpour of Saltoun, William le Harper de la Lawe near Edinburgh, Whiting le Harpour at Lanark. Place-names such as Harperrig in the Pentlands, Harperfield near Lanark and Harpertoun near Kelso may mark land held for a harper's service. In 1325 the harper of Walter Fitz-Alan, Steward of Scotland, was arrested in London despite a safe conduct; harpers were sometimes used as messengers or spies.

established Burgh and testament records fill in the picture. Aberdeen's records of 1398–1407 name "Meg of Abernethy, harper", the only Scottish woman harper known by name; the only other record of a woman harper is a payment by the Countess of Mar in 1642 "to ane woman clairsocher". John Haislet was harper to Lord Semple in 1526. In 1612 Glenluce Abbey tried to evict a harper, James Gordon, from two back chambers. On 21 August 1649 the Canongate kirk session rebuked Ralph Potts, harper, for wandering during divine service. Robert McMillan, a Glasgow harper who died in 1597, left an estate of about £517 Scots, gold and silver deposited with an Edinburgh goldsmith, and to Andro Callum, minstrel in Edinburgh, "ane buird sex stuillis ane chyre wt his clairscheocht". Such sums placed successful harpers well above many small lairds.

established Art records both harps. The Kinloss Psalter of about 1475 shows King David with a tall, light Gothic harp. Painted ceilings at Crathes Castle (late 16th century) and Dean House in Edinburgh (early 17th century) show women and figures of Music with harps. The garden at Edzell Castle, made in 1604, has a figure of "Musica" with a lute, viol and an unmistakable clàrsach. In 1623 William Monteith of Randieford put a carving of himself playing a floor-standing gut harp over a window of Hill House near Dunfermline. The Campbells of Cawdor paid "the Lawland harper" in Glasgow 6s 8d on 1 October 1591, the last known payment to a harper described as Lowland. After that the gut-strung harp seems to fade from Lowland records.

Irish harpers in Scotland

established Harpers crossed the North Channel in both directions for centuries, and not always happily. Around 1490 an Irish harper, Diarmaid Ó Cairbre, cut the throat of Angus Óg, son of John of the Isles, at Inverness, reportedly in return for the promise of a Mackenzie daughter. He was torn apart by horses and his head set on a pole; the Dean of Knoydart's Gaelic poem addressed to the severed head survives.

shared The best-known visitor is Ruairi Dall Ó Catháin (Blind Rory O'Cahan), who died around 1650. Later Irish tradition made him a great Ulster lord, which Colm Ó Baoill has shown is unlikely; he may have been a son of the Giolla Dubh Ó Catháin of Dunseverick executed after 1641. A sailor's account of 1615 mentions O'Cahan's wife staying with Clanranald on Canna while her husband was in Scotland. Tradition says he composed "Da Mihi Manum" ("Give me your hand") after offending a Lady Eglinton, and that James VI laid a hand on his shoulder. The tune first appears in the Wemyss manuscript of 1644. He is often confused with the Scottish harper Roderick Morison, who was born about the time Ó Catháin died.

shared Others followed. A harper "Thomas Occulay" was made an honorary burgess of Edinburgh on 11 January 1717; Ó Baoill suggests this is the Irish harper Thomas O'Connellan, to whom tradition wrongly credits "Lochaber No More". Jago McFlaherty was resident harper to the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton in the 1680s and in 1682 bought virginal strings in Edinburgh. Daniel Melvile, harper, "from Ireland", was listed in Edinburgh in 1709. Denis Hempson (1695–1807) toured Scotland, played for the Laird of Struan, restrung a small harp at what was probably Lude, and said he played for Prince Charles Edward Stuart in Edinburgh in September 1745. He was the only one of the ten harpers at the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792 still playing wire strings with the nails.

established Echlin Ó Catháin (Echlin O'Kane), born at Coleraine in 1729 and taught by Cornelius Lyons, harper to the Earl of Antrim, travelled widely despite being blind. He was made a burgess of Inveraray on 9 September 1751. In 1779 Duncan Campbell took down his memoirs in Argyll. Boswell heard in 1773 that Lord MacDonald had given him a jewelled harp key on Skye; Lord MacDonald replied in 1785 that it was "made of common agate" and that O'Kane had been dismissed after a week of drunken playing. Some of his repertoire survives in the MacLean-Clephane manuscript from Mull. The last Irish harper of the old line to visit was Pádraig Ó Beirn (Patrick Byrne), photographed in Edinburgh around 1843 by D.O. Hill and Robert Adamson.

Clan harpers in the Highlands

established From the 15th century to the mid 17th, a harper was a normal member of any Highland household of rank. The hereditary harpers of the Lords of the Isles were the MacGhille Sheanaich family of Kintyre, probably named from the church of St Sennan at Kilmashennan. Duncan McOhanak witnessed a document at Finlaggan on 14 June 1456. In 1505 Muireach MacGhille Sheanaich, harper, held four merklands at Brunerican in south Kintyre. The family kept their lands under the Campbells, but from 1619 paid rent, and by 1636 "Murriock oig the harper" held only two merklands. After the siege of Dunaverty in 1647 they lost Brunerican and turned to other trades, including the ministry, the law and medicine.

established The Lamonts' harpers were MacEwens. Eugenio Clarsach of Kilmun witnessed a Lamont document in 1434; Dougal Harper appears in 1530 and his son Dougal Harperson in 1560. In 1646 the Campbells took revenge on the Lamonts for joining Alasdair Mac Colla. At Dunoon they hanged thirty-six leading men on one tree; among them was "Dougal Harper alias Mackalaster, servant to the said Sir James Lamond".

established The Earls of Argyll had MacVicar harpers. Brian MacVicar, cytharista to the Earl, witnessed a rental in 1549. Tradition says Argyll's harper and piper were captured by the Gordons at the battle of Glenlivet (Balrinnes) in 1594. The Campbells of Breadalbane bought harp strings in 1658, and in October 1662 their household entertained "the Harper and his man two dayes", the first contemporary record of a boy carrying a harper's instrument. Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck's harper, Duncan MacIndeor, died around 1694 at Upper Fincharn in Glassary leaving a movable estate of over £1,200 Scots and a house in Edinburgh.

established The Campbells of Cawdor were steady patrons. John Campbell, Bishop of the Isles and a son of Cawdor, left £100 to "David McFeye harper" in 1585. In 1615 the Thane of Cawdor fitted out his clàrsach player in Kentish cloth, fustian, a hat and a starched ruff, and paid £6 13s 4d for his passage to London. The Laird of Grant paid "Mulleachan the clairscher" in Edinburgh in 1620; in 1638 Grant's harper was injured in a drunken fight with a violer in Ayr. The Earl of Sutherland's harper, Donald McKean, died in a snowstorm in February 1602. Duncan Clarseough, harper to the Earl of Mar, was given land at Wester Cloveth near Kildrummy in 1438 after his patron's fall.

established The MacLeans were especially musical. John Garbh MacLean of Coll was said by a Cromwellian governor to resemble King David, being a great reader of scripture and a good harper; the "Caoineadh Rìoghail" (Royal Lament) on the execution of Charles I in 1649 is attributed to him. A rental of 1674 shows a harper holding Fanmore on Mull rent-free "for his service" to MacLean of Duart. Eachann Bacach's lament of 1649 for Sir Lachlan MacLean describes the harp being played at dawn "till at last you desired to sleep awhile", as quoted by Sanger and Kinnaird. Iain Lom's lament for the Marquis of Huntly in 1647 recalls "two harps vying with each other" while chessmen stood on the board and Spanish wine shone in silver cups.

shared Carved mermaids playing realistic clàrsachs decorate fireplaces in north-eastern houses: Urquhart (1651), Kilravock (1662), Cawdor (about 1670) and Kilcoy (1679). They seem to mark marriages among these families. The Rose family's crest at Kilravock is a harp.

Roderick Morison, the Blind Harper

established The most famous Scottish harper is Roderick Morison (Ruaidhri Dall), born about 1656, son of a Lewis tacksman. Blinded by smallpox while at school in Inverness, he became a harper, met Iain Breac MacLeod of Dunvegan in Edinburgh around 1681, and lived as both tacksman and harper at Dunvegan until 1688, when he was moved to Glenelg, probably for his outspoken Jacobitism. He composed songs in the amhran metre, including a lament for Iain Breac (died 1693), travelled widely and died in 1713 or 1714. No harp tune can be firmly credited to him. He has his own article in this series, based on William Matheson's edition of his poems.

established His contemporary Lachlann Dall, probably a MacKinnon, was a travelling blind harper for some fifty years. Sìleas na Ceapaich's lament for him lists the tunes he played for her and ends "Slàn a chaoidh le ceòl na clàrsaich", "farewell forever to the music of the harp".

Atholl: the heartland of the harp

shared Sanger and Kinnaird identify the Atholl district of highland Perthshire as the main centre of Scottish harping. The Lude harps were kept there. A MacEwen harper, "Anthony McEwin VcChlairser", witnessed a Robertson document in 1588, and "John McEvin harper" brought a claim in the Lude barony court on 15 August 1670 against a man who had struck him "with ane tree". The Book of the Dean of Lismore lists Robert Clàrsair of Lude. John Robertson of Lude (1667–1731) is said to have been the last laird there to play the harp himself.

established Records around 1700 name several harpers in a few miles of the Tay and Garry. Alexander Menzies, harper at Ballinearn, was rich enough to lend £1,000 Scots to Robertson of Killiechangie in 1698 and died before December 1705. Robert Robertson "alias Clarcer" of Straloch died in 1713. John Robertson "alias Clarsair" held Chalmer nan Teud (the chamber of strings) near Killiecrankie and in 1709 became one of the Duke of Atholl's poor men. George, Duncan and James Clarsair appear in muster lists of 1705–06 as "wanting a gun". Alastair Reid, "Harper and Servant to the Earl of Athole", was buried at Scone in 1639, and Charles Robertson of Auchleeks, who died before 1649, was known as Tearlach nan Teud, Charles of the Strings. The place-name Tigh nan Teud, "the house of strings", near Pitlochry, appears in a Gaelic poem tied to Donald Ballach of the 15th century.

traditional A story told by Seton Gordon says Tigh nan Teud got its name when Queen Mary's harp was restrung there in 1564. Sanger and Kinnaird reject it: Mary did not play the harp and her route into Atholl did not pass that way.

established In 1691 Robert Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle, wrote that "Irishmen, our Northern-Scottish and our Athole men are so much addicted to, and delighted with Harps and Musick", that poor men shivering with cold would leap through the house "like Goats and Satyrs" when they heard the harp.

Decline in the 18th century

established Professional harping faded across the Highlands between about 1650 and 1780. The last recorded professionals are few. Murdoch MacDonald, harper to MacLean of Coll, said to have been a pupil of Roderick Morison, gave up no arms in 1716 because "he was not in the rebellion", and died about 1739; Alexander Campbell, collecting music on Mull in 1815, called him "the last of our Hebridean Harpers". William McMurchy of Kintyre, piper, fiddler, harper, poet and scribe, was one of MacDonald of Largie's pipers in 1745–46 and died before 1782. Grant of Shewglie (died 1746) played harp, fiddle and pipes and composed a Gaelic poem in which his three instruments argue.

shared The causes were several and cannot be weighed precisely. Sanger and Kinnaird point to a change in musical fashion that began before the Jacobite risings. The fiddle took over the harp's role in dance and song; a student from Strathspey described women singers travelling with a "violer" in 1693, and Roderick Morison's jealousy of fiddlers was proverbial. The learned Gaelic order that the harp had served, the poets of the syllabic schools, was dying from the early 17th century. Chiefs were drawn into Lowland and London society, fell into debt and stopped keeping the old household of bard, harper and piper. The defeat of the Jacobites and the reorganisation of Highland society after 1746 finished what was left of the patronage. By then the clàrsach was usually one of several instruments played by an all-round musician, and nobody could live by it alone.

shared The once-common claim that the Church destroyed harps is not supported. The stories of instruments thrown on bonfires in the 18th and 19th centuries do not mention harps, which had already gone out of use.

The music: puirt, ports and manuscripts

established No harper wrote down his own music. Gaelic sources describe the harper's art as puirt, uirt and orgain. Sanger and Kinnaird suggest port meant a tune, orgain the ringing bass harmony, and cuir or uirt perhaps the decoration. The earliest Gaelic use of port for harp music is in a poem by Donnchadh Mòr of Lennox in the Book of the Dean of Lismore. Irish sources do not use the word in this sense until about 1600.

shared The best-known group of Scottish harp tunes is the "ports", which Sanger and Kinnaird date from about 1570 to 1650. They have an irregular, asymmetrical shape, often open with a wide rising run like a tuning prelude, and repeat phrases an octave apart. Many are named for great families of the late 16th century: "Port Robart" (probably Robert Stewart, Earl of March and Bishop of Caithness, died 1586), "Port Lennox", "Port Atholl", "Port Gordon", "Port Patrick" and "Port Jean Lindsay". Linking these titles to particular patrons is the authors' reconstruction.

established The ports survive because lute and mandora players copied them. The main sources are the Skene manuscript (about 1615), the Straloch manuscript (1620–27), which ends one tune "Finis Port Rorie Dall", the Wemyss manuscript (1644) and the Balcarres lute book (about 1692–94), which has four versions of "Port Atholl". Later fiddle and keyboard collections by Daniel Dow, John Bowie and James Oswald, and the MacLean-Clephane manuscript from Torloisk on Mull, preserve more. Bowie's harp tunes were said to have come from "the famous Rory Daul". Other surviving pieces include "Cumha Easbuig Earra-Ghàidheal" (Lament for the Bishop of Argyll), "The Lament for the Earl of Wigtown", "Suipeir Thighearna Leòid" (Lude's Supper), "Fuath nam Fidhlearan" (The Fiddler's Contempt) and several fàilte (salutes).

shared Some harp tunes passed into the pipe and fiddle repertoire. The pipe tune "Cumha Craobh nan Teud" (Lament for the Harp Tree) is also called "Corrienessan's Salute", and Morison is described playing a salute at Corrienessan in the Reay country. Sanger and Kinnaird suggest that the Perthshire fiddle tradition of the Gows inherited harp music directly, noting that Niel Gow's mother may have been a MacEwen. That is an intriguing suggestion rather than a proven descent. Tunes also crossed the sea: Carolan and other Irish harpers used Scottish melodies, and "Lochaber No More" was claimed for Irish composers though early versions are Scottish.

established The Welsh Robert ap Huw manuscript, copied in the early 17th century from older harp music, includes a ground called "Albann Hyfaidd", the Scottish measure, and a lost tune called "Alban benporth". It and Edward Bunting's Irish notes give modern players their best guides to the stopping and ornament techniques that wire strings require.

Classical revival in the 19th century

established Interest returned just as the last harpers died. In 1784 the Highland Society of London sent for Christopher MacRae from Kintail to be taught the harp; the plan to train him in London and then in Wales failed, and in 1786 the society paid his passage to Jamaica. In 1805 the Highland Society of Scotland borrowed the Lude harps, and John Gunn's report of 1807 began the study of the old instruments. In 1812 the Highland Society of London appointed Malcolm MacGregor, a London pipe maker, as "Caledonian Harp" maker, to copy General Robertson's harp, but there is no sign he made any.

established Meanwhile genteel women played the modern pedal harp. The MacLean-Clephane sisters of Torloisk collected Gaelic and harp tunes and played them on the pedal harp. Elizabeth Jane Ross transcribed pipe tunes on Raasay in 1812. In Edinburgh, Joseph Elouis taught the harp and in 1807 published Scottish songs arranged for harp or piano, insisting on plain accompaniments that did not smother the melodies. The music was Scottish in tune but European in instrument and style.

established Itinerant harping survived at the bottom of society. William ap Pritchard, a blind Welsh harper who played at fairs in Galloway and Ayrshire, died with his family in a collapsed gravel pit near Twynholm in April 1816; Joseph Train's account of him gave Walter Scott the model for "Wandering Willie" in Redgauntlet.

The 20th century revival

established The modern revival began with the first National Mòd at Oban in 1892, when Lord Archibald Campbell offered a prize for a Gaelic song with self-accompaniment on the clàrsach. Two singers from the St Columba Gaelic Choir in Glasgow, Kate MacDonald and Lizzie B. Mackay, entered and shared it. Lord Archibald had wire-strung copies of the Queen Mary harp made by the Edinburgh firm of Glen. The National Library of Scotland notes that they proved too hard for classically trained harpists and were dropped. The harps used at the Mòd from 1893 were small gut-strung instruments made in London and decorated to look Gaelic, some with brass blades for changing key. The Mòd added a competition for Gaelic airs on the clàrsach in 1902.

established Patuffa Kennedy-Fraser took up the small harp in 1914 to accompany her mother Marjory Kennedy-Fraser's Songs of the Hebrides. She played to troops in France and toured Europe and the United States on a Morley "Celtic harp". Mòd clàrsach competitions lapsed in 1909 for lack of entrants and resumed in 1922, when Mrs Duncan MacLeod gave five harps to An Comunn Gàidhealach for loan to competitors.

established After the Mòd of 1931 fourteen people met at the home of Mrs Ingrams in Dingwall and founded the Clarsach Society, Comunn na Clàrsaich. Mrs Hilda Mary Campbell of Airds became president and Heloise Russell-Fergusson was among the founders. The society lent harps to learners, held a summer school at Portree in 1933 and set out its aims: to promote the clàrsach, to preserve its place in Scottish national life, especially among Gaelic speakers, and to uphold its title as the oldest accompaniment of Gaelic song. In 1972 the third aim was rewritten to call the clàrsach "the true and most ancient instrument of Scotland", a shift away from Gaelic song. Russell-Fergusson, a noted performer in the 1940s who was proclaimed "Bardess Scotia" in Brittany, later gave old harps to the Highland Folk Museum and the West Highland Museum.

established Most revival playing has used the small gut- or nylon-strung lever harp, not the old wire-strung clàrsach. From the 1970s an instrumental style entered mainstream Scottish traditional music. The National Library of Scotland credits Alison Kinnaird, co-author of Tree of Strings, with pioneering it. A smaller movement plays wire-strung replicas of the old harps, building on research such as Ann Heymann's work on Bunting's notes; much of it is organised through the Wire Branch of the Clarsach Society. The museum harps are too fragile to play, so CT scans and studies such as Loomis's now guide the makers of replicas.

• The old Gaelic harp was strung with brass wire and played with long fingernails, on the left shoulder.
• Two different harpers called Pate Harper played at James IV's court, one on the gut harp and one on the clàrsach.
• A Glasgow harper who died in 1597 left an estate of over £500 Scots and willed his clàrsach to an Edinburgh minstrel.
• Meg of Abernethy, recorded in Aberdeen around 1400, is the only Scottish woman harper known by name.
• The harper of Sir James Lamont was among thirty-six men hanged on a single tree at Dunoon in 1646.
• An Irish harper murdered Angus Óg of the Isles at Inverness around 1490.
• The Edinburgh harps were long said to be hornbeam; they are willow.
• The first Mòd clàrsach prize, in 1892, had only two entrants, who shared it.

• Do not say Scotland invented the harp.
• Do not state as fact that the Picts invented the triangular frame harp; it is Sanger and Kinnaird's argument.
• Do not present the clàrsach as exclusively Scottish; it was shared with Gaelic Ireland.
• Do not say the Scottish harp was a folk instrument; it was a professional and aristocratic one.
• Do not give a single settled date for the Queen Mary or Lamont harps.
• Do not call the Queen Mary and Lamont harps hornbeam; their soundboxes are willow.
• Do not say Mary, Queen of Scots, played or certainly gave the Queen Mary harp; both are tradition.
• Do not date the Dupplin Cross to the 10th century; it was carved around 800.
• Do not confuse Ruairi Dall Ó Catháin (died about 1650) with Roderick Morison (about 1656–1714), or Ruairi with the later Echlin Ó Catháin.
• Do not say Roderick Morison composed "Fuath nam Fidhlearan" or other harp tunes; no tune can be firmly credited to him.
• Do not call the Trinity College harp the harp of Brian Boru.
• Do not say the old harpers wrote down their music; it survives only through others.
• Do not say today's clàrsach is an unbroken survival of the medieval tradition, or that the modern gut-strung clàrsach is the same instrument as the old wire-strung harp.
• Do not blame the Church for destroying the harps; the tradition had faded before the bonfire stories.