French Origins
The earliest drawings of triangular-frame harps appear in the Utrecht Psalter, written and illustrated in the early 9th century from a scriptorium in Rheims. Ten of the illustrations show figures holding harp-like instruments, and in six of them the forepillar is clearly shown. The Utrecht Psalter was penned between 816-835 AD. and found its way to the scriptorium at Christ Church in Canterbury, England 970AD. where several copies were produced. Although portraits of the biblical King David playing a stringed instrument were already a feature of European religious manuscript art, manuscripts before this time show David with a medieval lyre rather than a harp.
Read more about this topic: Origin Of The Harp In Europe
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“Have ye got the parcel there for Mrs White?
Ye haven’t! Oh, begorra!
Say it’s comin’ down tomorra—
And it might now, Michael, so it might!’”
—William Percy French (1854–1920)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)