Origin of The Harp in Europe - Scottish Origins

Scottish Origins

The connection of Scotland its love of stringed instruments is both ancient and recorded. An Iron Age lyre dating to 2300BC was discovered on the Isle of Skye making it Europes earliest surviving stringed instrument. The earliest descriptions of a European triangular framed harp i.e. harps with a fore pillar are found on carved 8th century Pictish stones. Pictish harps were strung from horsehair. The instruments apparently spread south to the Anglo Saxons who commonly used gut strings and then west to the Gaels of the Highlands and to Ireland. Exactly thirteen depictions of any triangular chordophone instrument from pre-11th century Europe exist and twelve of them come from Scotland. Moreover, the earliest Irish word for a harp is in fact 'cruit', a word which strongly suggests a Pictish provenance for the instrument. Only two quadrangular instruments occur within the Irish context on the west coast of Scotland and both carvings instruments date two hundred years after the Pictish carvings. The first true representations of the Irish triangular harp do not appear till the late eleventh century in reliquary and the twelfth century on stone and the earliest harps used in Ireland were quadrangular lyres as ecclesiastical instruments, One study suggests Pictish stone carvings may be copied from the Utrecht Psalter, the only other source outside Pictish Scotland to display a Triangular Chordophone instrument. The Utrecht Psalter was penned between 816-835 AD. While Pictish Triangular Chordophone carvings found on the Nigg Stone dates from 790-799 AD. and pre-dates the document by up to thirty-five to forty years. Other Pictish sculptures predate the Utrecht Psalter, namely the harper on the Dupplin Cross c. 800 AD.