The Queen Mary and Lamont Harps: Scotland's Medieval Clàrsachs

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 harps themselves are hard evidence. Their histories before 1805 are not. Almost everything about how they reached Lude comes from a letter by General Robertson of Lude that was sent with them to Edinburgh in 1805 and later lost, as reported (and, by his critics' account, embroidered) by John Gunn in 1807. Keith Sanger and Alison Kinnaird's Tree of Strings (1992) tested those traditions against Lude estate papers and other records; their findings are given here as dated scholarship. Since then, Karen Loomis's study of both harps at the University of Edinburgh (MMus 2010, articles from 2012, PhD 2015), using CT scanning and materials analysis, and radiocarbon dating published with David Forsyth, have revised the wood identification and the date of the Queen Mary harp. Where newer work and the 1992 book disagree, the newer finding is given and the book's view is labelled as such.

Three survivors

established Three early Gaelic wire-strung harps survive: the Queen Mary and Lamont harps in Edinburgh and the Trinity College harp in Dublin. All share the Gaelic construction: a soundbox carved from one block, hollowed from the back and closed with a separate panel; a raised central rib pierced for the strings; a deeply curved pillar with a T-shaped section; and a one-piece neck with tapered metal tuning pins between two metal string-bands. The frame was held together largely by the tension of the wire strings.

shared Keith Sanger and Alison Kinnaird, in Tree of Strings (1992), wrote that the three harps "do not differ markedly in size and structure", with the Lamont the largest. Their measurements (Appendix A of the book, the Edinburgh figures supplied by the museum) give total heights of 30¾ in for the Queen Mary, 37½ in for the Lamont and 33 in for the Trinity College harp, the last an estimate of its original form because it has been restored so often. NMS currently gives the Queen Mary harp's height as 795 mm, a little more than the book's figure.

Wood: from hornbeam to willow

established The first edition of Tree of Strings followed information from the museum that both Edinburgh harps were made of hornbeam. The authors built an argument on it: hornbeam was not native to Scotland, so its use pointed to imported timber, a shared source and instruments of special importance. They noted a Scottish merchant named Duncan Lamont trading to England from Dumbarton in 1475 as one illustration of how such wood might arrive.

established That identification has been withdrawn. A note in the 2015 re-setting of the book records that work by the museum's conservation department, together with Karen Loomis's thesis study, established that the soundboxes of both harps are willow. NMS now says the Queen Mary soundbox "was once thought to be European hornbeam" and is willow, the traditional wood for Gaelic harps. The radiocarbon report on the Queen Mary harp adds that its neck is probably apple or pear (the Maloideae group), and that the forepillar is hard to identify, with hornbeam a possible candidate. The book's import argument should therefore not be repeated. Willow, as the authors themselves noted, is the wood named for harps in Gaelic poetry, and the Trinity College harp's soundbox and neck are also willow.

The Lamont harp: construction and metalwork

established The Lamont harp is the larger and plainer of the pair. Sanger and Kinnaird describe brass shoes on every string hole, mostly simple pierced triangles, with the three highest and two lowest shaped like horseshoes; Joan Rimmer suggested these five may be the only originals. The brass string-bands are pierced for 32 pins, of which 30 survive, and carry a geometric pattern and the incised letters SIII. Four pins have slots rather than holes for the strings.

established The end of the neck carries a triangular brass mount, 6 in high, engraved with interlace and foliage around a boss made to imitate a cabochon jewel. Its underside had to be cut and folded back to fit over the pillar, so it was made separately from the harp. Two brass straps ending in animal heads strengthen the pillar joint. R.B. Armstrong thought them later additions; Sanger and Kinnaird thought them contemporary with the mount, and compared the work to unused brass harp mountings found at Ballinderry in Ireland.

established The neck rises to a "hump" above the highest tuning pin. Armstrong called this the "Highland hump" and treated it as a Scottish feature. Sanger and Kinnaird pointed out that all three early harps have it, the Trinity College harp least, and argued that its size follows the size of the harp, since it strengthens the neck against the pull of the wire. The Lamont harp shows why that mattered: a crack along the grain under the hump was repaired with metal reinforcement at an early date.

established Later study has shown how badly the Lamont harp has suffered. Simon Chadwick's summary of Loomis's 2010 CT study describes a pillar broken in two, with one end replaced and the replacement itself broken and repaired at least twice; a neck broken at the joint with the box, split and twisted along its length; and a frame so distorted that the original string lengths cannot be recovered directly. A crack along the side of the box was repaired with bronze straps fixed inside, and a patch cut from a 17th-century legal document was glued inside the box.

shared An inscription from the 1650s on the outside of the box, reported as "Al Stew(art) of Clunie his Harp 165(0)", is too late for the harp's making and probably records an owner or a repair. Its reading and the identity of this Alexander Stewart are not settled in the sources we opened.

shared Sanger and Kinnaird argued that the Lamont's strong, simple lines and lack of carving mark it as the "working instrument" of a professional harper rather than a ceremonial harp. That is an interpretation, though a reasonable one.

The Queen Mary harp: construction and wear

established The Queen Mary harp is the smallest and best preserved of the three, and Tree of Strings calls it the least altered. Its original back panel is worn at the shoulders and lower left corner, as is the animal head carved at the base of the box; the authors read this as the trace of how a harper lifted and set it down. The string-bands have holes for 29 pins, and an extra string passes through a hole just below the band. Wear on the soundboxes shows the clàrsach was played on the left shoulder, with the left hand on the treble; the authors linked this to the solid neck, which fans the short strings to the player's left, and to protecting the long nails of the melody hand.

established NMS reports that CT scanning revealed the maker's tool marks inside the soundbox, and Chadwick's account of Loomis's scans describes long, angled gouge marks, a barrel-vaulted air space at the top of the box, and neck mortices that run right through. Loomis also produced a contour map of the soundboard's thickness, published in the Galpin Society Journal in 2012.

Strings and sound

established Sanger and Kinnaird noted that medieval "brass" was closer to modern bronze and harder than modern brass. By testing the largest wire that would pass through each pin hole on the Queen Mary harp, they found diameters from 0.018 in to 0.039 in (about 0.46 to 1 mm), as a rough guide only, since the pins are out of order and some holes are blocked.

established Whether any original strings survived to 1805 is not known. In Edinburgh the Queen Mary harp was strung first with brass wire, then, under the Swiss harpist Joseph Elouis, with gut, and played. Gunn reported the treble sweet and the bass weak.

shared Loomis's PhD analysed surviving wire, reconstructed "as-built" string lengths and discussed possible pitches. Gold bass strings, tried by some modern players on replicas, are not shown by any surviving string from these harps.

Decoration and symbolism

established The Queen Mary harp is richly decorated. Compass-and-rule patterns of crosses and diagonal lines are burnt into the front, sides and base of the box; semicircles joined by double lines run along the neck. Fine foliage scrolls are carved at the top of the box and on the pillar. NMS reports traces of vermilion pigment in the carving and silver bosses. Six silver studs run down the front of the pillar. Two fish- or serpent-like heads face away from each other at its centre, with split-palmette leaves and knotwork on their necks.

shared Four carved roundels on the pillar show a lion, a griffin, a two-footed dragon, and a group in which a unicorn stands over a wyvern and appears to offer it a speckled fish. Sanger and Kinnaird read these as Christian symbols (the lion of the Resurrection, the griffin as Christ the conqueror, the unicorn as Christ overcoming the serpent), and the vine-like plant with small crosses on the pillar as Christ the "true vine". They read the letters "D.O." carved behind the reptiles' eyes as possibly Deo Oblata, "offered to God", a suggestion they credit to Father J.M. Senes. From this they argued the harp was made for a religious purpose or a churchman's patron. These readings are plausible and well argued but cannot be proved.

shared The book linked the split-palmette spirals to the West Highland school of monumental carving of the 14th and 15th centuries, following John Bannerman's 1991 paper "The Clarsach and the Clarsair", which described that pattern as characteristic of West Highland sculpture "with no parallel in Irish art of this period". A grave slab at Keills in Knapdale carved with a harp of almost identical decoration, and a tuning pin found at Finlaggan on Islay, supported their picture of craftsmen working under the Lords of the Isles in Knapdale.

The added ornaments and the stolen gems

established George Buchanan's History of Scotland (published 1582; the book gives 1565) said that Highlanders strung their harps with brass wire or gut, played with long nails or a plectrum, and decorated them with silver and precious stones, the poor with crystal. John Monipennie's English version (1594, 1603) distinguished "Harpes and Clairshoes", as quoted by Sanger and Kinnaird.

established The Queen Mary harp shows signs of such additions laid over its original carving. The centre of one roundel has been gouged out, apparently for a setting. A ring of brass tacks high on the outer face of the pillar and three small nails on the neck interrupt the carved pattern. Chadwick's analysis notes depressions on either side of the pillar that held circular stones. Because the attachments cut into the original decoration, the harp is older than they are.

traditional Lude family tradition, through General Robertson and Gunn, said these holes once held gold and jewelled plaques bearing the queen's portrait and the royal arms of Scotland, stolen during the Jacobite Rising of 1745. NMS repeats that the harp "may once have had a gold portrait of Mary", possibly a gold half-ryal coin. Loomis's CT images allowed the inside diameter of the ring of fastenings to be measured, which has been used to test whether an early gold coin of Mary's reign would fit. No ornament survives, and the 1745 theft is unrecorded outside the family account.

The Lamont tradition: from Argyll to Lude

traditional According to the tradition at the start of Gunn's report, the "Caledonian" (Lamont) harp was brought from Argyll by a lady of the Lamont family on her marriage into the Robertsons of Lude. Gunn's text gave the year as 1640, corrected in an erratum to 1460; Charles Bell later gave 1464. Burke's Landed Gentry (1848) first named the bride as Lilias Lamont and her husband as Charles, "5th Laird of Lude". Gunn added the guess that the lady played the harp herself; Sanger and Kinnaird showed this was his inference, not the General's.

shared Tree of Strings found that the tradition fits the records better than one might expect, though not perfectly. The husband was probably Charles Mac Ian of Clunes, a younger son of John Donaldson of Lude and possibly the "Carlet Johnson" who witnessed a document for the Earl of Atholl in 1474. A mid-18th-century Lude manuscript gives his birth as about 1455, which would make a marriage in 1460 to 1464 impossible unless it was a child marriage. John Lamont, who died in 1488, and his brother Duncan did have sisters named Lilias and Mary. No independent document naming Lilias has been found.

shared The book also linked the harp to the MacEwens, hereditary poets to the Campbells. A Lamont of Kilmun discharge of 1434 was witnessed by "Eugenio Klerscharch", Eoghan the harper. MacEwen harpers later appear near Lude: "Anthony McEwin VcChlairser" in 1588 and "John McEvin harper" in the Lude baron court in 1670. The authors suggested a MacEwen harper may have come with the Lamont harp; that is a hypothesis. The Lamonts did keep harpers: their papers name a "Dougal Herper" in 1530 and a "Finlay Roy Harper" in 1568.

The Queen Mary tradition: Beatrix Gardyn

traditional Gunn's version of the second tradition is that Mary, Queen of Scots, gave the harp to Beatrix Gardyn of Banchory while hunting in Perthshire, and that her portrait and the royal arms were then fixed to it. Gunn added a long description of a royal hunt in Atholl, which he dated to 1563. Bell, in 1880, dismissed Gunn's "flowery antiquarian statements", observed that there had been more than one Queen Mary in Scotland, and suggested the harp came to Lude later, through the marriage of John Robertson of Lude with Margaret Farquharson of Invercauld, a descendant of Beatrix.

established Sanger and Kinnaird confirmed the outline of Beatrix's life from family papers. She was widowed at the Battle of Pinkie in 1547, when her husband Finlay Mòr Farquharson, ancestor of the Farquharsons of Invercauld, was killed. She then married John Tarlachson (son of Charles) Robertson of Monzie, a cadet of the Lude family. Between 1547 and 1564 she and her husband acquired Inchmagrannoch, former church lands of Dunkeld Cathedral, and the Crown confirmed them in it on 18 December 1565. The Robertsons of this line later recovered Lude itself.

shared Their reading was that the harp was already about a century old when the royal fittings were added, and that the gift, if there was one, may have marked the Inchmagrannoch grant rather than a hunting trip. They noted that contemporary evidence does not show Mary playing the harp, and that her journey to Atholl ran through Strathardle, not past the ferry house later called Tigh nan Teud. The date of Mary's Atholl visit is itself given differently: Gunn says 1563, NMS "c.1563", the book 1565 in one chapter and Seton Gordon's legend 1564.

shared The book also offered a speculative earlier history. The harp's Christian imagery suggested a church owner; a 1530 inventory of Lindores Abbey in Fife lists "Ane clairchew"; and Lindores lay across the Tay from the Ogilvys of Inchmartine, who held Lude from 1518 until the Robertsons recovered it around 1619 to 1621. The authors called this chain circumstantial, and it should be treated so.

shared Radiocarbon dating now places the harp's making in roughly the century 1325 to 1425. That settles one point: it cannot have been made for Mary, Queen of Scots, or for any 16th-century owner. It does not tell us whether Mary, or Mary of Guise, had anything to do with the later fittings.

At Lude: the last players

established Lude was a centre of harping. The Book of the Dean of Lismore (1512 to 1540s) names a "Robert Clarsair Leod" (Lude), and later records show professional harpers across central Perthshire. John Robertson of Lude (1667 to 1731) is described as the last laird of Lude to play the clàrsach himself. General Robertson's 1805 letter, quoted by Gunn, said that the father of Robertson of Struan had often heard the General's great-grandfather play old music "on Queen Mary's Harp", and had learned many of the tunes on the fiddle.

shared The Irish harper Denis O'Hampsey later recalled restringing a "very small" harp for a Scottish laird; Bunting suggested it was the Queen Mary harp, and Sanger and Kinnaird thought the laird probably a Robertson of Lude.

From Lude to the museum

established In June 1805 the Highland Society of Scotland thanked Brigadier-General Robertson of Lude for agreeing to lend his two harps, which had arrived by November. In January 1806 the Society commissioned John Gunn to report on them for a fee of 20 guineas, and paid D. Sommerville £37 5s 6d for drawings. Gunn's report appeared separately in 1807 as An Historical Enquiry Respecting the Performance on the Harp in the Highlands of Scotland. The General's covering letter was mislaid while Gunn wrote, which explains confusions in the text, and it was lost altogether by 1880.

established The harps passed by marriage to the Steuarts of Dalguise. In 1880 they were deposited on loan in the National Museum in Edinburgh, and Charles Bell read his "Notice" of them to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (published in its Proceedings, volume 15, 1880 to 1881). Tree of Strings says Bell "acquired" the harps for the Society in 1880; later accounts and NMS show the 1880 arrangement was a deposit, and the purchase came in 1904.

established After the death of John Steuart of Dalguise and the sale of the Dalguise estate in 1904, the Society of Antiquaries bid for the harps at auction. Simon Chadwick's research reports that it paid £890 for the Queen Mary harp, its grant covering that harp only, and that the "Queen Mary" name was thought to have raised the price. The Lamont harp sold for about £750 to the antiquary W. Moir Bryce, who lent it to a loan exhibition in London that year and gave it to the nation in 1918 to 1919. Both harps are now displayed in the National Museum of Scotland.

The Trinity College harp for comparison

established The Trinity College harp in Dublin is the third early survivor. It has been popularly called the "Brian Boru harp", but no connection with the Irish high king who died in 1014 is accepted. The link was promoted by Charles Vallancey in 1786 and dismissed by George Petrie in 1840. It bears the O'Neill arms on a small silver badge and was given to Trinity College in 1782 by William Conyngham. It was dismantled and rebuilt by the British Museum in 1961 into its present, wider form. It is the model for the Guinness trademark (registered 1876) and for the harp in the arms of the Irish state.

shared Sanger and Kinnaird described its soundbox and neck as willow, probably mid to late 15th century, with a later forepillar and as many as five layers of decoration. They argued that its original decoration is so close to the Queen Mary harp's that both came from one West Highland workshop, and that it reached the O'Neills in the 16th century through the marriages linking the MacDonalds of the Isles and Antrim with that family. Agnes MacDonnell, whose "clareschaw" was disputed in 1490 to 1491, belonged to those MacDonalds. The authors called the route speculation. A West Highland origin for the Trinity harp has support but is not universally accepted.

• The Queen Mary harp is older than Mary, Queen of Scots, by well over a century.
• In 1805 the Queen Mary harp was strung with gut and played by a Swiss harpist, Joseph Elouis.
• A patch made from a 17th-century legal document is glued inside the Lamont harp.
• The Queen Mary harp's carvings include a unicorn apparently offering a fish to a wyvern.
• The Lamont harp's arrival at Lude is dated 1640, 1460 and 1464 in different accounts.

• Myth: Mary, Queen of Scots, owned, played or commissioned the Queen Mary harp. The gift to Beatrix Gardyn is Robertson family tradition reported by John Gunn in 1807; the physical evidence supports at most that fittings were added to an already old harp, possibly in her reign.
• Myth: the Queen Mary harp dates from the 16th century. It is radiocarbon dated to between the second quarter of the 14th century and the first quarter of the 15th.
• Myth: the harps are made of hornbeam. National Museums Scotland has withdrawn the hornbeam identification; both soundboxes are willow.
• Disputed: the Lamont harp came to Lude with Lilias Lamont in about 1460–1464. It is family tradition; no document naming her has been found.
• Myth: the Trinity College harp was Brian Boru's.
• Disputed: the Queen Mary and Trinity College harps came from one West Highland workshop. Sanger and Kinnaird argued it; many scholars accept a West Highland origin, but the single-workshop idea, and any claim that the Trinity harp was made in Scotland, remain arguments.
• Myth: the Society of Antiquaries acquired the harps in 1880. They were deposited then and bought in 1904, the Lamont harp by a private buyer who later gave it.
• Disputed: the reading "Deo Oblata" and the Lindores Abbey route. Neither is established.