Was at a session at an Irish language immersion weekend last week. As I was setting up, a man came up to me and, pointing at my harp, asked me “what do you call that?”
Looking over my shoulder to see if my Ravenna had suddenly changed shape, I answered “er…it’s a harp.”
Him: “Oh, but it’s called something different, isn’t it?”
Me: "Well, sometimes they’re called “Celtic harps” or “lever harps.”
Him: “Oh no…my wife’s a harpist… – she plays a ‘real’ [sic] harp with the symphony – and she says those are called something different.”
At which point, the other harper in the session growled at him: “It. Is. A. Harp.”
I can only imagine the conversation he had with his wife when he got home!
Next time, just make up a name, i.e., Its a “Masa Aoileach”. I don’t speak gaelic, but this is the best online translation I could get for “Cow paddy”.
With any luck, he’ll accept it as gospel, and then go off to impress others with his knowledge of traditional celtic instruments.
I can imagine that a hoity-toity spouse who plays a hoity-toity pedal harp might insist on calling yours a cláirseach. Because that sounds hoity-toitier.
Maybe in this case. But believe me, I’m an expert on hoity-toity. And I’ve known people who, if they learned the word “cláirseach”, would insist on nothing less. They’d take a 2-week Irish course in the Gaeltacht just for the pronunciation, then go to sessions to impress everyone by loudly ordering a pint of “Cláirseach”.
Tsk. France Ellul was playing his harp at the Hellfire Caves gathering last week, and I helped him carry his gear in from the car. One of the Hellfire club asked what the instrument was, and France and I answered simultaneously “Harp” and “Clairseach”.
Then we had to explain that “Harp” was generic and “Claireach” was particular.
Am I hoity-toity, MTG?
“Cláirseach” isn’t all that particular. It’s just the most common and generic Irish word for harp and, among Irish speakers in the Gaeltacht, would be applied to everything from a wire-strung Gaelic harp to a Paraguayan harp to a pedal harp. Certain factions within the historical harp movement want to MAKE it apply to the wire-strung Gaelic harp in particular, but that doesn’t reflect the practice of people who actually speak and live through the language.
When speaking of my harps with other Irish speakers, I usually identify the lever harp as “cláirseach nua-Ceilteach” (Neo-Celtic harp) and the wire-strung as “cláirseach Gaelach” (Gaelic harp).
In my hoity-toity way. (I’m trying to live up to it, now) not being in the gaeltacht, I understand “clairseach” to be a celtic harp as opposed to a concert harp. That is how we would cry it in Scotland, and I think it is the same in Wales. That would be using “clairseach” as an English word for a celtic harp, rather than as an Irish word for “Harp”. I came across a personally-designed greetings card on nationalistic themes, which had a Green, White and Gold (or Orange) flag, and a concert harp. The concert harp just looked plain wrong and out of place. I would say it had to be a clairseach. Sorry. Hoity-toity, I know, but there it is. And when I say celtic. in this context, I mean Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish or Breton. Or them’uns in Spain.
I don’t know about Wales, but typically in Scotland “clàrsach” (note spelling) refers to any small folk harp, not just the wire-strung Gaelic harp.
In Ireland “cláirseach” (note spelling) refers to any harp (including concert harps). “Cruit” is the preferred term for the wire-strung Gaelic harp (such as the one that belongs on the Irish flag).
Some players of the Gaelic harp would prefer to limit “cláirseach” and “clàrsach” to just the wire-strung harps of Ireland and Scotland, but that’s really neither historically nor linguistically accurate.
Think they might be struggling with that definition when ours are normally (?) gut- or nylon-strung. Although my intelligence could easily be out of date since it’s based on Alison Kinnaird and Ann Heymann’s lovely 1983 album The Harper’s Land, where the sleeve notes strongly imply gut-strung for the Scottish tradition and wire-strung for the Irish…
