Simon Chadwick's
Early Gaelic Harp Emporium

Background reading... The early Gaelic harp is a huge subject in itself, yet a true appreciation of it requires a broad understanding of early music and Scottish and Irish history and culture going back a thousand years or more. The following books are offered as mere suggestions...

Click on a title to read more about it and, if applicable, for ordering information from the Emporium

Ann Buckley (ed.)
Early Music of Ireland
Early Music Vol 28 No.2, May 2000
Scholarly journal providing some useful background information. 

Ross W. Duffin (ed)
A Performer's Guide to Medieval Music
Indiana University Press, 2000
A whole series of essays by different (mostly American) scholars and musicians on all aspects of medieval performance. 

Brian Keenan
Turlough
Random House, London, 2000
A novel based on the life of Turlough O'Carolan

Malachi McCormick
The Roots of Music: The Irish Harp in Poetry and Legend
Stone Street Press, USA, 1999
Three tiny handmade books, in a luxurious slipcase

Séamus Ó Brógáin
The Wolfhound Guide to the Irish Harp Emblem
Wolfhound Press, Dublin, Ireland, 1998
An excellent account of the national symbolism of the Irish harp from medieval times to the 20th century. 

Dáibhí Ó Cróinín
A New History of Ireland, Volume I: Prehistoric and Early Ireland
Oxford University Press, 2005
A superb scholarly resource for all aspects of early Irish history. 

John Purser
Scotland's Music
Mainstream, London and Edinburgh / BBC Scotland, 1992
A very ambitious overview from prehistory to the present day

Karen Ralls-MacLeod
Music and the Celtic Otherworld
Polygon at Edinburgh, 2000
Early Medieval Irish literary descriptions of the spiritual dimension of music. 

Derick S. Thomson (ed)
The Companion to Gaelic Scotland
Blackwells, Oxford, 1983
A very useful encyclopedia covering all aspects of Gaelic culture

Fintan Vallely (ed)
The Companion to Irish Traditional Music
Cork University Press, 1999
An excellent encyclopedia of Irish music past and present

Russell Walton
A Harp of Fishbones: Folk tales of the Harp
White Row Press, Belfast, 1992
Mystical and mythological tales.

Simon Chadwick