HARP, a stringed instrument of music, traceable to a very remote antiquity, as is shown by the harps painted on the walls of tombs at Thebes, and described in Bruce's Travels, and in the splendid French work Description de l'Egypte. Jones and Parry have written upon the Welsh harp, Bunting upon the Irish harp, and Gunn upon the harp of the Scottish Highlanders. The modern double-action harp of Sebastian Erard has a compass of six octaves, from E to E, with all the semitones, and even quarter tones. For some observations on the harp, and especially the Irish harp and its scale, see G. F. Graham's Dissertation prefixed to Wood's Songs of Ireland, 1854.
HARPAGINES (ἀρπαγίη), in Antiquity, grappling-irons which were flung with violence against the rigging of an enemy's ship, and, when entangled there, were used to drag the ship within reach, so that it might be boarded to more advantage, or destroyed.