Mary Kerr née Doran lived in the mid 19th century, and she is said to have had a harp. But I don’t know if she was a traditional player or a classical player or what. This post is to try and gather together the information we do have about her and her harp, to see what we think.
The harp
Item number DF:1928.49 in the collections of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin is a harp, which is said to have belonged to Mary Doran.
I was in the Museum store a couple of years ago, and while I was there I had a brief look at the harp. I did not do a proper study of it, because it is large and heavy and stored rather inaccessibly, and I did not ask to have it taken out of its storage location. But I tried to photograph some of the details in situ. The harp seems similar in overall shape and size to the 19th century traditional wire-strung harps played by the traditional Irish harpers, which is why I thought it was worth paying attention to.
I don’t have a good photo of the whole harp, because of how it is stored, but this line drawing shows its overall shape. The harp is 173cm high according to the accession register, which is a bit taller than usual for a 19th century traditional wire-strung Irish harp. I measured the soundboard as 52cm wide, and 138cm long. The harp has 36 string positions on the soundboard but only 35 tuning pin positions. The longest string (from lowest pin position to lowest soundboard string hole) is 154cm. There are no strings on the harp now, and I did not see any string fragments (though I have not looked very closely at the inside).
It looks to me like the neck is made from just one piece of wood (plus the added shoulder block), and the pillar also of one piece, connected together by a tenon rising from the top of the pillar up into the underside of the neck. This is not normal for 19th century Irish harps, and it doesn’t even follow normal 18th century practice; it is almost like the maker is copying the idea of the medieval neck-pillar joinery. The tenon has been exposed on the top of the neck at the bass end, where the top surface of the bass end of the neck has been cut down to reduce the height of the harp.
There are no cheek-bands on the neck, which we don’t expect on a 19th century wire-strung Irish harp, but neither is there the iron plate under the neck which we do expect.
The tuning pins are rather roughly made from iron, and there are bridge pins, but some are missing and the bridge pins in the bass have been replaced with wood screws. It looks like there may have been some attempts at re-positioning the bass pins; there is a line of bass tuning pin holes which runs up off the top edge of the neck, which has been cut down through them. There are also three bridge pins left behind relating to this re-pinning; they are just uselessly set in the neck, with the tuning pins inserted in their new positions right next to them.
I also note that the highest treble tuning pins are shorter, and the lowest bass pins are longer, which seems to be a normal thing for the traditional wire-strung Irish harps. Some pins may be out of sequence. The very highest four pins are a different design, with a forged collar between the square drive and the tapered shaft. Perhaps these are the only original treble pins, or perhaps they are later replacements inserted to replace lost older pins.
You can see that there is a nice clean moulding carved into the top edge of the neck running along both sides from the shoulder towards the bass end, but it kind of fades out due to the top of the neck being cut down at the bass. The poorly positioned bass pins, and the woodscrews replacing the lost bridge pins, and the rough re-cutting, gives the neck a rough shoddy look, but I think the original underlying workmanship seems nice enough.
There doesn’t appear to be any decoration except for the moulding along the top of the neck, and a long vine of shamrocks carved in high relief up the front of the forepillar. There are traces of green paint on the vine and the leaves. They don’t go right to the bottom, but finish neatly with a single leaf a little way up. However they do go right to the top and appear to be cut off, where the top of the neck at the bass end has been cut down, to make the harp less tall than it once was.
On the soundboard front, there are the remains of what look like paper labels against some of the strings. There are not labels against every string; I think the ones with labels are 10, 11, 12, 15, and 22. I cannot see any traces of lettering on any of the labels, I think because of the heavy over-varnishing. We could speculate wildly that these labels are for e″ d″ c″ g′ and upper sister g but this is total guesswork.
Paper labels like this are a feature of some other harps I have seen. The Queen Mary harp (NMS LT1) has paper labels on some of its strings, which I think may date from its restringing with gut in about 1804. The Egan wire-strung Irish harp made for the Irish Harp Society in the 1820s (NMI DF:1913.381) has later scratched lettering beside all the treble strings. The Cullycapple harp (NMNI BELUM 0143.1973) has two sets of paper labels on all strings. Interestingly, all three of these examples, as well as Mary Doran’s harp, have the labels on the right side of the soundboard (from the player’s point of view), making them readable when the harp is played in the traditional Irish left orientation. But I would usually associate the idea of putting paper labels against the strings, with harps not used in the inherited tradition; I think this is something that a self-taught amateur might be more likely to do. Of course all of these sets of labels may well have been added later, not by the original player.
I don’t fully understand the interior construction of Mary Doran’s harp. It has a curved back shell with ribs, as we would expect. The soundboard looks like it may have reinforcing linen strips pasted across the butt joints between the sections. But there are no ribs; and the central strip seems to be like a tall rib glued edge-on to the soundboard. I don’t understand how this relates to the string holes drilled through from the front. I don’t at present know how the strings may have been attached inside. I only have a few low-quality endoscope photos of the interior; a proper photo survey would show a lot more detail.
This photo shows the lower left bass end of the soundboard. You can see the wood that the soundboard is made from, and also the way the edge strip covers the join of the soundboard and curved back shell. There is a large iron bolt or nail holding the pillar on, and there is a small front foot. These are all normal features of traditional wire-strung Irish harps from the 19th century.
You can also see that the whole harp has been heavily painted with a coat of dark varnish.
Museum records
The Museum accession register for 1928 describes the harp:
49 HARP
Played on by the seller’s (Mrs. Carnan) Grandmother
Mrs. Kerr (née Mary Doran) schoolmistress of Collon,
Co. Louth
H. 68 1/4″ B. 221/4″348/3 Bought £10
National Museum of Ireland, Arts and Industry Division, Accession Register, 1928
I am not 100% sure of the reading of the seller’s name. I am guessing Carnan, but it could be Carron or something similar. I do not know what the significance of the fraction 348/3 written in red is.
The accession register tells us that the museum paid Mary Doran’s granddaughter £10 for the harp; I would think £10 in 1928 is worth maybe a few thousand nowadays, which seems about right for an old non-working harp.
Schoolmistress in Collon
The mueum accession register gives us the extra snippet of information that Mary Doran was a schoolmistress in Collon, County Louth.
Collon National School was founded in 1845. The school is still there, though the buildings are not that old, as I think the old school was demolished and rebuilt in 1896. You can check the old OS maps online. On the 1908 map (published 1912) the (rebuilt) school is clearly marked. The 1835 map (published 1837) was done before the school was founded, and it shows a RC chapel on the same site.
I went to Collon on a snowy day to photograph the school for you.
The school website used to have a brief history of the school, which mentions Mary Doran:
The school has been on the same site since 1845. An application for funds towards teacher salaries and school books was made to the National School Board on 26th July 1845 by Fr Michael Kieran, PP of Collon at the time. There were two classrooms in the school, for male and female students. The school opened from 9 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, Monday to Friday and from 9-12 on Saturdays. The average attendance was 90 boys and 70 girls. Two teachers were employed, Patrick Mc Nally and Mary Doran, both aged 22 who had been approved by the local inspector. The school was taken formally under the Education Board on 25th September 1845.
Collon National School website, accessed 29 Nov 2022
If Mary Doran was aged 22 when she started working at the school in 1845, then we can calculate that she would have been born in 1822 or 1823.
Finding out more about her
I found Mary Kerr’s death record online; she died in Tallanstown on 18th April 1878. Her occupation is given as “slaters wife”. The death record gives her age as 50, which would mean she would have been born in 1827-8; this would also mean she would have been only 17 or 18 when the school opened in 1845. I don’t know if that is plausible. In general I would tend to prefer earlier records because I find that people’s ages are often not correct in these 19th century death records. On the other hand the school history is a bit vague.
The baptismal records of Collon RC parish are online at the NLI and I had a quick look through; Not all the entries are legible, but I found a Mary Doran who was baptised on 28 March 1822. The parents are given as Hugh (Doran) and Mary Cunningham. But this might not be her, it might be someone else.
The marriage of Mary Doran to Peter Kerr is listed in the parish records on 2 Feb 1852. Peter Kerr was apparently born c1820, if we believe his age in his death record. He died in Ardee Workhouse, on 21 March 1890; his place is given as Tallanstown, and his occupation is given as “slater”. It sounds like they may have retired or moved to Tallanstown, 18km north, some time before 1878.
I found a couple of notices from Ardee Workhouse committee meetings, where they list the contracts they have agreed with tradesmen for food, supplies, and services. The list of tradesmen includes “Peter Kerr Collon, repairs of roofing” (Dundalk Democrat and People’s Journal, Sat 12 Sep 1863 p5), and “Keeping roofing, &c, in repair, Mr Peter Kerr, Collon” (Drogheda Argus and Leinster Journal, Sat 29 Sep 1866 p5). In 1865 we see “Wm Kerr – Roofing” but I don’t know if this is a different person or a mistake (Drogheda Argus and Leinster Journal, Sat 16 Sep 1865 p5). At any rate, it looks like Peter and Mary Kerr were living in Collon in the 1860s.
I looked in the Griffith Valuation of 1854. There are a few Peter Kerrs listed, but they are all farmers in north county Louth, Monaghan, Armagh and Down. There is a Peter Carr who lived in Collon Market square, in a “house (part under Petty session-house)”. I don’t know if Carr might be an alternative spelling of Kerr, I don’t know if this might be where they lived. On the other hand if they lived at the National School they would not be listed in Griffith. But I have not seen a reference to the school having a house for the schoolmaster or schoolmistress. Some National Schools did, but I am not sure that Collon school did.
Peter and Mary Kerr had a number of children. The Kerr family on Facebook have assembled records of the children and their descendents, though not everything seems clear and consistent. The children of Peter Kerr and Mary née Doran include Peter, baptised 18 Sep 1854; Margaret, baptised 18 Mar 1856; and Catherine, baptised 23 Mar 1860. All three of these were baptised in the parish of Collon. Their son Peter married in Ardee RC church on 29th June 1879, the year after Mary had died. Peter the son is listed as a slater, and so his his father Peter Kerr. Peter the son is listed as living in Tallanstown.
I have not traced any more than this but I know there are living descendents on the Facebook page. Hopefully one of these descendents might be able to give us more information about Mary and her harp.
I made a map showing these places.
Questions
In this post I have tried to line up all the information I currently have. As you can see it is not a very satisfactory post. There is a kind of gaping void between the genealogical record which appears to be fairly clear about who Mary Doran was, and the harping records which consist of an extant instrument in the Museum and a very terse note connecting it to Mary Doran.
Did Mary Kerr née Doran actually play this harp? Or did she just come into possession of it somehow and it was handed down to her granddaughter with a kind of garbled story that “this was granny’s harp”?
If Mary Kerr née Doran actually played this harp, what was the context? Was this something she played before she was married, when she was a girl? Did she play it at the school? Or is this something that she played later on as an adult? I think this kind of skill was more likely something that people learned as part of their education, between the ages of 10 and 20, so if Mary Doran played the harp I would expect her to have learned at that age, in the 1830s or early 1840s.
If Mary Doran learned to play the traditional wire-strung Irish harp in the 1830s or early 1840s, who might she have learned from and where could she have learned? The Belfast harp school was still running in Cromac Street through until 1838, and then in Talbot Street in 1839 and into the start of 1840; the teachers there were Valentine Rennie up until his death in 1837, and after that Alex Jackson. I think it is possible that Mary Doran was sent to Belfast in the mid to late 1830s to learn the harp at the school. We don’t have records of the names of the pupils in the 1830s. Against this I suppose is the unusual design and appearance of her harp. We kind of expect the pupils of the Belfast harp school to have harps made by John Egan, or copying his design. Mary Doran’s harp is similar, but is not apparently copied directly from one of Egan’s harps; most noticeably it is significantly taller.
Could Mary Doran have learned to play the traditional wire-strung Irish harp at the Drogheda harp school? Hugh Frazer was teaching there from 1842 to 1844. We are told that the harps were made in Drogheda by a local carpenter. However the one surviving example we know about is obviously copying the Egan design fairly closely, and while it is possible that Mary Doran learned there, it seems less likely that her harp was made there given what we know so far about the scene there.
Is it possible that Mary Doran’s harp was made by some local woodworker or carpenter, who had vaguely seen a harp but had his own ideas about what it should look like? Was she self-taught on the harp? We don’t even know whether Mary Doran’s harp was fitted with wire strings like the traditional harpers, or gut strings like the classical harpers. Could she have had some contact with classical harpists or harp teachers playing on gut-strung pedal harps? Should we put her in the same category as Michael Deigan? He made and played at least one oversized harp in 1842-3, which I think was gut-strung in classical style. Mary Doran’s harp could have been a bit useless; she could have just tried it a bit without really knowing what was going on. It could all be just a massive red herring.
I don’t really know how to proceed. Unless some of the family have letters or diaries or something else that gives us actual information about Mary Kerr née Doran’s musical activities, the only thing we have to go on is her harp.
We could do an intensive technical study of the harp. If someone were to put up the couple of grand needed to fund the project, we could do a 3D scan to create a computer model; we could do detailed photo surveys and measurements and analyse if and how the harp may have worked. If we could get accurately measured string lengths, that would allow us to analyse the design of the stringing, and may give us a clue as to whether it would work as a traditional wire-strung harp or of it was more likely designed as a classical gut-strung harp. If someone put up even more money, an accurate copy could be made by a professional harpmaker following the scan data, and the new copy could be strung and played to see how it sounds and what it is like to play.
But for now we have to mark this one down as a big question mark, I think.
Please comment below if you have any more information.
Many thanks to the National Museum of Ireland for allowing access to Mary Doran’s harp.