Trinity College harp
medieval musical instrument used as a model for the coat of arms of Ireland
The Trinity College harp, also known as "Brian Boru's harp", is a medieval musical instrument on display in the long room at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. It is an early Irish harp or wire-strung cláirseach. It is dated to the 14th or 15th century and, along with the Queen Mary Harp and the Lamont Harp, is the oldest of three surviving medieval harps from the region. The harp was used as a model for the coat of arms of Ireland and for the trade mark of Guinness stout.
History
It is uncertain who commissioned the Trinity College harp, although structural evidence suggests it was made in the fifteenth century. It is similar in construction and design to the Queen Mary Clarsach in Scotland. It is likely, however, that the harp was made for a member of an important family, for it is skilfully constructed and intricately ornamented.
According to Charles Vallancey writing in 1786, it was reputedly once owned by Brian Boru, High King of Ireland in the early eleventh century. However, this link was dismissed by George Petrie in 1840 as "a clumsy forgery, which will not bear for a moment the test of critical antiquarian examination". Petrie dates its construction "to the fourteenth, or more probably to the early part of the fifteenth century." Joan Rimmer (1969) dated it to "probably from the fourteenth century".
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This entry incorporates text from “Trinity College harp” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.