Stringing

From the earliest times, writers on Irish and Scottish Gaelic music noted that Gaelic harps were different from harps used in the rest of Europe, on account of their strings being metal rather than the generally used gut:

The reason that metal strings gained this attention is that almost all musical instruments in Medieval Europe including other types of harp were normally strung with gut, or occasionally horsehair or silk. The exceptions were the Gaelic harp, and the psaltery family and their mechanised descendants, the clavichord, harpsichord and forte-piano, which all used brass wire.

However the descriptions of Gaelic harp string materials are inevitably rather general and vague as the Latin, Irish or English words could be used to refer to either brass or bronze. Dictionaries frequently give both metals in the definition, and the writers were not concentrating on technical details.

Occasionally more unusual string materials are described, like silver, gold or (possibly) electrum. Though the words for silver and gold are unambiguous, these descriptions are usually found in myths or legends and it is not usually clear if the writer is saying that the strings are literally made from that material, or something that looked like it, or decorated with that material, or attempting poetically to describe their sound, or to exaggerate richness and luxury:

References

Simon Chadwick