Simon Chadwick's
Early Gaelic Harp Emporium

Books for children

I hope to offer an unusual selection of story books suitable for teenage readers, or for anyone who has had enough hard historical research and would prefer a good story!

Julian Atterton
The Last Harper
1987 Drew / Swallow paperback
Slightly tatty secondhand with some library markings.
�5 sold. contact me for availability and postage
This story is set in the 6th century AD, in the British kingdoms of Rheged and its neighbours, in what is now the border areas between Scotland and England. These are the lands of Taliesin and the Gododdin, preserved in later Welsh stories. This lively book tells a super action story of a young man who becomes apprenticed to a master harper.

Russell Walton
A Harp of Fishbones: Folk tales of the Harp
White Row Press, Belfast, 1992
Paperback, stickers to inside front cover & ffep obscuring ownership stamp, otherwise good. �25
contact me for availability and postage.
This slim paperback contains a curious mixture. As well as a good selection of mystical and mythological tales from early medieval Irish manuscripts, there are also more recent folk tales and memoirs and reminiscences of the 18th and 19th Century Irish harpers. The tales are all re-written for the book but seem fairly close to their source texts. (Not to be confused with Joan Aiken's 1972 collection "A Harp of Fishbones and other stories".)