Well said Redwolf! Historically these are vexed questions!!! 
Fodder for harp geeks!!
The speakers of the language are the owners of the language, and it bothers me sometimes, as an Irish speaker, when players of one or the other who are NOT Irish speakers insist that “this one is a cláirseach” and “that one isn’t.”
Very true…I should have been more clear at first, I was lamenting the fact that we don’t have a separate modern Irish term for the two instruments beyond adding more terms of qualification. It would be easier on everyone! Yet I do not have so inflated of any opinion of myself to inflict it on others.
I will readily confess to having a limited command of Irish. (a thing I’ve worked to correct lately.) Yet it is weight of history, over two decades of research and opinions of those much wiser than me that informs my own. From the perspective of history the wire strung harp is the true Gaelic harp. Certainly that it was the most revered instrument in Gaelic culture for over a millennium that we know of, should accord it this honor.
But that doesn’t impune the neo-Celtic harp as a useful and beautiful instrument, at least in my mind.
As you mentioned the interchangeability of the terms depends on when and where you talking about and to whom. Again history has much to say here.
Victorian Capitalism is the real culprit here. The original Gaelic terms were co-oped by makers of the new gut string lever harps in the 19th century in marketing their wares to the middle and upper classes who cold afford them. Interestingly, Egan one of the first makers of the new instruments, went to great pains to make the public understand that these instruments were not the traditional Irish harp but “In every manner save size like the pedal’d concert harp”. He understood that few would buy the old style harps in Ireland in 1810.
Most harp makers just after him had the opposite approach however and wanted to appeal the Romantic climate of the era and they succeeded. Even as late as the 1940’s some were mindful of the fact that the two were separate instruments and objected to the use of these Gaelic and Irish terms for the modern harps, as one Scottish writer but it “the plastering of imagined items and inaccurate terms on our Gaidhlig from outside professors is ceaseless, nowhere is this better seen in the terms for our native harp.”
This was quite a while ago and much has changed. Yet some still exhibit a real sense of horror at the suggestion that the levered harp is a modern instrument with wide acceptance dating back only to the mid-late 19th century and not to the remote “Celtic” past.
This seems downright silly to me. No one in their right mind would deny the accordion it’s place in traditional music which introduced at roughly the same time as the new harp. And by saying “New Harp”, bearing in mind it was new to 1800’s Ireland and Scotland…it being a version of an instrument eons old before it’s introduction there.
As the great box player and composer Paddy O’Brien has said “there are no bad instruments just bad players”. He felt the image of the neo-Celtic harp had been done harm, at least in the minds of traditional musicians, by the lugubrious quasi-classical style of the likes of Carmen Quinn and her peers. This style itself was the survival of the “genteel parlour style” cultivated by non-traditional musicians who drew their inspiration from “classical” harpists of the Romantic age which had nothing to do with traditional music.
Luckily the approach to the new instrument has changed and continues to do so. That nylon strung lever harp has huge potential in traditional music as demonstrated by the work of many great traditional musicians in the last 40 years. The Neo-Celtic harp has been redeemed of Victorian aphorisms in their hands.
quote]Part of the problem is that Irish speakers have never really favored one over the other. Clearly the cruit was originally akin to the Welsh crwth…a lyre-like instrument.[/quote]
As to the ancient terms, there is a lot of new research in this area. Cruit/Chruit was the term in both Ireland and Scottish until the 13th century brought further change to the language which was for all intents and purposes was still one language with regional dialect differences.
Despite the close similarity to the Welsh name “Crwth” we shouldn’t assume the Gaelic “chruit” was always refering to a lyre. In the early medieval period it could have refered to either lyre or harp. There is strong evidence that as early as the 8th century Cruit refered primarily to the triangular harp in Scotland and likely in Ireland too. The age of the inception of the triangular harp keeps getting pushed back as well.
The term “Tiompán” crops up in both Scotland and Ireland during this time, further confusing the issue for us now! Yet it seems likely “Tiompán” was adopted for some sort of Gaelic Lyre or Psaltery type instrument that didn’t survive to be well documented. Despite the late Derrick Bell’s opinion, there little to support the idea that the Tiompán was a hammer dulcimer.
We come across the first use of the term “Clársach” in Scotland around 1200. A bit little past 1350 or so Cláirseach in various spellings pops up in Irish but almost exclusively in the North until the 17th century. “Cruit” hung on in the west and south of Ireland in common use well into the 18th century. Even O’Carolan used both in a single poem!
What it all comes down to is which Gaeltacht you’re in. I can pretty much guarantee that, in Gleann Cholm Cille, if you plunk down a Lyon & Healy concert grand pedal harp or a Trinity replica, the answer to “cad é seo?” (what is this?) will be “is cláirseach í!”
When you think about it, the same is true with English. We call them all “harps” (even going so far as to translate “cithara” as “harp,” even if it probably referred to a lyre or zither), and have to qualify them as “wire,” “lever/folk/neo-Celtic,” “gothic,” etc.
Very true. Even back in the 1500’s there was the comment " what one man calls a cithara the other call lyra and still another the arpa." And we both had a dime of every time we get asked “What is that”? of any species of harp we play, we could probably retire!!!
And I am proud to call myself a creature. I mean Cruiteoir! 
Seeing your new post…they are all real harps! This is another form of lunacy that I’ve encountered. Each have their own voices and abilities…and that’s a good thing.
CM
Seriously, though…you’d think at that level making sure your instrument is in good tune before going before a panel would be second-nature. Granted that harp strings can be fickle, and wire strings particularly so, still…
