musical instrument of the stringed kind, of a triangular figure, and held upright between the legs of the performer.

Papies, and Du Cange after him, will have the harp to have taken its name from the Arpi, a people of Italy, who were supposed the first that invented it; and from whom, they say, it was borrowed by other nations. Menage, &c. derive the word from the Latin harpa, and that from the German herp or harp, Others bring it from the Latin carpo, because touched or thumrned with the fingers. Dr Hicke derives it from harpa or hearpa, which signify the same thing; the first in the language of the Cimbri, the second in that of the Anglo Saxons. The English priest who wrote the Life of St Dunstan, and who lived with him in the tenth century, says, cap. ii. n. 12. Sumptu secura ex more eitharam suam, quam pater na lingua hearpam vocamus; which intimates the word to be Anglo-Saxon.

The harp was the favourite musical instrument of the Britons and other northern nations in the middle ages; as is evident from their laws, and from every passage in their history, in which there is the least allusion to music. By the laws of Wales, a harp was one of the three things that were necessary to constitute a gentleman, i.e. a freeman; and none could pretend to that character who had not one of these favourite instruments, or could not play upon it. By the same laws, to prevent slaves from pretending to be gentlemen, it was expressly forbidden to teach, or to permit, them to play upon the harp; and none but the king, the king's musicians, and gentlemen, were allowed to have harps in their possession. A gentleman's harp was not liable to be seized for debt; because the want of it would have degraded him from his rank, and reduced him to a slave. The harp was in no less estimation and universal use among the Saxons and Danes. Those who played upon this instrument were declared gentlemen by law; their persons were esteemed inviolable, and secured from injuries by very severe penalties; they were readily admitted into the highest company, and treated with distinguished marks of respect wherever they appeared.

There is some diversity in the structure of harps. That called the triple harp has 97 strings or chords in three rows, extending from C in the tenor cliff to double G in alt, which make five octaves: the middle row is for the semitones, and the two outside rows are perfect unisons. On the bass side, which is played with the right hand, there are 36 strings: on the treble side, 26; and in the middle row, 35 strings. There are two rows of pins or screws on the right side, serving to keep the strings tight in their holes, which are fastened at the other end to three rows of pins on the upper side. The harp, within the last 40 years, has been in some degree improved by the addition of eight strings to the unison, viz. from E to double F in alt. This instrument is struck with the finger and thumb of both hands. Its music is much like that of the spinet, all its strings going from semitone to semitone; whence some call it an inverted spinet. It is capable of a much greater degree of perfection than the lute.

There are among us two sorts of this instrument, viz. the Welsh harp, being that just described; and the Irish harp. Plate CCL. No. 1. represents the harp of Brian Borromh, king of all Ireland, slain in battle with the Danes A.D. 1014, at Clontarf. His son Donagh having murdered his brother Teige, A.D. 1023, and being deposed by his nephew, retired to Rome, and carried with him the crown, harp, and other regalia of his father, which he presented to the Pope in order to obtain absolution. Adrian IV. surnamed Breakspear, alleged this circumstance as one of the principal titles he claimed to this kingdom in his bull transferring it to Henry II. These regalia were kept in the Vatican till the Pope sent the harp to Henry VIII. with the title of Defender of the Faith; but kept the crown, which was of massive gold. Henry gave the harp to the first earl of Clanricard, in whose family it remained till the beginning of the 18th century, when it came by a lady of the De Burgh family into that of Mac Mahon of Clenagh in the county of Clare, after whose death it passed into the possession of Commissioner Mac Namara of Limerick. In 1782 it was presented to the right honourable William Conyngham, who deposited it in Trinity college library. It is 32 inches high, and of extraordinary good workmanship; the founding-board is of oak, the arms of red fally; the extremity of the uppermost arm in part is capt with silver, extremely well wrought and chiseled. It contains a large crystal set in silver, and under it was another stone now lost. The buttons or ornamental knobs at the sides of this arm are of silver. On the front arm are the arms chafed in silver of the O'Brien family, the bloody hand supported by lions. On the sides of the front arm within two circles are two Irish wolf dogs cut in the wood. The holes of the founding board where the strings entered are neatly ornamented with escutcheons of brafs carved and gilt; the larger founding-holes have been ornamented, probably with silver, as they have been the object of theft. This harp has 28 keys, and as many string-holes, consequently there were as many strings. The foot piece or rest is broken off, and the parts round which it was joined are very rotten. The whole bears evidence of an expert artifit.

King David is usually painted with a harp in his hands; but we have no testimony in all antiquity that the Hebrew harp, called chimor, was any thing like ours. On a Hebrew medal of Simon Maccabaeus we see two sorts of musical instruments; but they are both of them very different from our harp, and only consist of three or four strings. All authors agree, that our harp is very different from the lyra, cithara, or barbiton, of the Romans. Fortunatus, lib. vii. carm. 8. witnesseth, that it was an instrument of the barbarians:

Romanusque lyra, plaudat tibi barbarus harpa, Graecus Achilliacha, crotta, Britanna canat.

Of ancient harps, two are represented on the same plate.—No. 2. is a trigonum or triangular harp. It is taken from an ancient painting in the museum of the king of Naples, in which it is placed on the shoulder of a little dancing Cupid, who supports the instrument with his left hand and plays upon it with his right. The trigonum is mentioned by Athenaeus, lib. iv. and by Julius Pollux, lib. iv. cap. 9. According to Athenaeus, Sophocles calls it a Phrygian instrument; and one of his dipinophili tells us, that a certain musician, named Alexander Alexandrinus, was such an admirable performer upon it, and had given such proofs of his abilities at Rome, that he made the inhabitants μανιατικῶς, "musically mad." No. 3. and 4. are varieties of the same instrument. No. 5. is the Theban harp according to a drawing made from an ancient painting in one of the sepulchral grottoes of the first kings of Thebes, and communicated by Mr Bruce to Dr Burney *. The performer is clad in a habit made like a shirt, such as ney's Riff. the women still wear in Abyssinia, and the men in Nubia. cf Myfe, It reaches down to his ankles; his feet are without P. 224* fondals, and bare; his neck and arms are also bare; his loofe white sleeves are gathered above his elbows; and his head is clofe shaved. His left hand seems employed in the upper part of the instrument among the notes in alto, as if in an arpeggio; while, flopping forwards, he seems with his right hand to be beginning with the lowest string, and promising to ascend with the most rapid execution: this action, so obviously rendered by an indifferent artist, shows that it was a common one in his time; or, in other words, that great hands were then frequent, and consequently that music was well understood and diligently followed.

On this instrument Dr Burney makes the following observations: observations; "The number of strings, the size and form of this instrument, and the elegance of its ornaments, awaken reflections, which to indulge would lead us too far from our purpose, and indeed out of our depth. The mind is wholly lost in the immense antiquity of the painting in which it is represented. Indeed the time when it was executed is so remote, as to encourage a belief, that arts, after having been brought to great perfection, were again lost and again invented long after this period.—With respect to the number of strings upon this harp, if conjectures may be allowed concerning the method of tuning them, two might be offered to the reader's choice. The first idea that presented itself at the sight of 13 strings was, that they would furnish all the semitones to be found in modern instruments within the compass of an octave, as from C to c, D to d, or E to e. The second idea is more Grecian, and conformable to antiquity; which is, that if the longest string represented prophanomene, or D, the remaining 12 strings would supply all the tones, semitones and quarter-tones, of the diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic genera of the ancients, within the compass of an octave: but for my part, I would rather incline to the first arrangement, as it is more natural and more conformable to the structure of our organs, than the second. For with respect to the genera of the Greeks, though no historic testimony can be produced concerning the invention of the diatonic and chromatic, yet ancient writers are unanimous in ascribing to Olympus the Phrygian the first use of the enharmonic: and though in the beginning the melody of this genus was so simple and natural as to resemble the wild notes and rude effays of a people not quite emerged from barbarism; yet in after-times it became overcharged with finical toppers and fanciful beauties, arising from such minute divisions of the scale as had no other merit than the great difficulty of forming them. It seems a matter of great wonder, with such a model before their eyes as the Theban harp, that the form and manner of using such an instrument should not have been perpetuated by posterity; but that, many ages after, another of an inferior kind, with fewer strings, should take place of it. Yet if we consider how little we are acquainted with the use and even construction of the instruments which afforded the greatest delight to the Greeks and Romans, or even with others in common use in a neighbouring part of Europe, only a few centuries ago, our wonder will cease; especially if we reflect upon the ignorance and barbarism into which it is possible for an ingenious people to be plunged by the tyranny and devastation of a powerful and cruel invader."

Bell-HARP, a musical instrument of the string kind, thus called from the common players on it swinging it about, as a bell on its bas.

It is about three feet long; its strings, which are of no determinate number, are of brass or steel wire, fixed at one end, and stretched across the sound board by screws fixed at the other. It takes in four octaves, according to the number of the strings, which are struck only with the thumbs, the right hand playing the treble and the left hand the bass: and in order to draw the sound the clearer, the thumbs are armed with a little wire pin. This may perhaps be the lyra or cythara of the ancients; but we find no mention made of it under the name it now bears, which must be allowed to be modern.

Harp of Aeolus. See Acoustics, p. 149.