Irish harps became gradually bigger until by the seventeenth century they were large and floor-standing. The instrument is smaller than other eighteenth- century harps, it was designed to be held on knee, as was the fourteenth-century Trinity college harp.
It has a soundbox of willow, metal strings, a T-shaped pillar and a string-bearer reinforced with metal.
The present triangular shape of the Irish harp was set by the eleventh century, its particularly robust, heavy construction most likely developed to suit our climate. Or it may be that the ninth-century-AD Danish incursions brought the actual triangular harp here. It is possible that the actual triangular harp may have had pre-Christian Celtic association In Ireland and therefore deliberately was not depicted in carvings – the psalterium may have been portrayed instead as a symbol of Christianity. Since lyres too are found from the Black Sea to the Atlantic it is likely that our early Celtic ancestors had adopted or become influenced by them. Harps are still used all over North to Central Africa, in Burma and Afghanistan. In ancient Greece harp was played by males and females, finger plucked for ritual use, plectrum plucked (a harder sound) for dancing. The instruments’ oldest records date to the 2500 BC Mesopotamian graves of Ur, and various forms had travelled to Syria by 2000 BC, to Palestine where they were used in Hebrew temple orchestras. Harps and lyres are not by any means restricted to the ‘Celtic’ countries. In the passing on of skills, and players today are all in many ways also innovators, as each makes their own stamp on the instrument. Still, because the harp’s tradition was broken, it suffers from that rupture. It and its music have been painstakingly researched, instruments reconstructed and new harps based on models that survive from the eighteenth century have been made, music collected from the last of the old order of harp players has been revived to suit these, and techniques of playing to suit the more modern dance-music repertoire have been perfected. The instrument’s intense history has constantly motivated exploration, retrieval and ingenuity among harpers and harp enthusiasts through the twentieth century. Yet it is almost two hundred years since Ireland’s old harp tradition flickered out. Ireland is the only country to have such a music instrument as its symbol. The national symbol of Ireland is the harp, it is on government stationery, Garda caps and coin currency.
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