Can I introduce you to my harps? I’ve only been teaching myself for 7 months, but seem to have acquired no fewer than 3! You know that old cliché about everyone “having” an instrument? I’ve been playing the piano since I was a child, but I feel I might’ve just discovered the instrument of my heart. And it would never have happened if I hadn’t written my newest book.
When you’re writing (in first person POV too) about the greatest bards of the age, you feel your lack of bardic expertise keenly,** so learning to play the whistle and the harp was extended research. I didn’t realise how much I would fall in love with the harp in particular.
My newest harp (you can hear it in the video) is the Rosemarkie from Ardival Harps, Scotland. It’s special because it is probably the closest I can come to the kind of harps my bards might have played in the Old North (yr Hen Ogledd) during the late 6th century. It’s modelled after the harp depictions found on Pictish stones dating to the 7-8th centuries - like this one on the Dupplin Cross.
I’ve been documenting my harp journey on Instagram since last May. I had never played a stringed instrument before. If you check out those first videos, you’ll see that I was a total newb. But there are lots of resources for learning on Youtube, and many good demonstrations of technique. I’m excited to see where I end up after a year’s worth of learning!
Are there any other self-taught harpists or musicians out there? Anyone else learning because they’re obsessed with their own fantastical version of medieval Britain? 😅
*The men went to Catraeth; they were renowned;
Wine and mead from golden cups was their beverage;
That year was to them of exalted solemnity;
Three warriors and three score and three hundred, wearing the golden torques.
Of those who hurried forth after the excess of revelling,
But three escaped by the prowess of the gashing sword,
The two war-dogs of Aeron, and Cenon the dauntless,
And myself from the spilling of my blood, the reward of my sacred song.
**similarly the case for the cerdd dafod, or tongue craft element of the bardic art. I made a study of cynghanedd (Welsh rhyming form) in an attempt to compose my own poetry in English as authentically as possible. But more on that in another post.
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