The Queen Mary harp

CD: Clàrsach
na Bànrighe

The last person to play the Queen Mary harp in the old tradition (with metal wire strings) was John Robertson of Lude who died c.1729.

Gunn describes how his repertory was preserved in the family and published by John Bowie in 1789.

The repertory is very interesting, consisiting of three ‘Airs by Fingal’, three ‘ports’, a salute, and a battle tune - the latter having Gaelic words which survive in the Robertson family papers. This selection could be seen as a good representative sample of the different kinds of music played by the old Gaelic harpers.

My CD, Clàrsach na Bànrighe, includes all of the music played by John Robertson on the Queen Mary harp, and preserved in Bowie's book. I perform it using my replica of the Queen Mary harp, with brass, silver and gold wire strings. Click here for more info...

John Robertson was not quite the last to ever play on it. In 1805 John Robertson's great-grandson, General William Robertson, loaned the two harps to the Highland Society where they were exhibited in Edinburgh; both were drawn and described by John Gunn, and the Queen Mary harp was strung with gut pedal harp strings and played upon by the fashionable pedal harpist Elois. Although the strings were subsequently removed to save stressing the instrument, the wooden pegs inserted to retain the gut strings, and a short fragment of one string, are still on the harp.

Because the harp is now riddled with woodworm, it is too fragile to string and play today.

Simon Chadwick