EARLY INSTRUMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 518, 22 November 1928, Page 14

EARLY INSTRUMENT

THE HARP THAT ONCE... STORY OF ORIGIN Older than England, older than Rome, older than Babylon, older than the written or pictured story of man is a musical instrument still in everyday use; that instrument is the harp. Who made the first harp? The old Greeks said that Mercury discovered their little harp, called the lyre. These imaginative Greeks tell fascinating stories of the origin of many of our musical instruments, and you should real all you can of Apollo and the nine Muses, for then you will know that music and musical instruments were highly honoured by the Greeks and by all ancient people as being gifts from the gods, and not merely mechanical inventions of man. The Assyrians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks; and in fact, all ancient nations used the harp in one or another of forms throughout their history. From the small hand-harps (lyres) to the large sizes used in temple worship

these ancient harps were graceful and beautifully ornamented instruments, just as were our earliest, hand-made harpsichords, spinets, and clavichords. Ireland in particular is associated with this historic and poetic instrument —the harp. Centuries before the good St. Patrick converted the Irish kingdoms (there were several kingdoms on the Isle of Erin) an Egyptian wrote this; “There is a city there (in Ireland) whose citizens are most of them harpers, who, as they play, chant sacred hymns to Apollo.” Through the centuries Ireland has been a singing land, a land of minstrelsy, of travelling “troubadours”—as minstrels were called in Southern France. Great festivals of songs were held every few years in Erin, and such a festival was called a Feis, just as the Welsh called (and still call) their annual tournament of song an Eisteddfod. In early Christian times the Church did not approve of the revelry which these three-day feasts and festivals encouraged, and the Feis was condemned and prohibited. Of course, you know the tune that is sung throughout the world to these wellknown words of Thomas Moore: The harp that once through Tara’s halls, The soul of Music shed, Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls As if that soul had fled.