news – Simon Chadwick

Miss Flinn

Miss Flinn was a young woman who played the traditional wire-strung Irish harp in Drogheda in the 1840s. This post is to try and find out more information about her.

There was apparently a player of the traditional wire-strung Irish harp in Drogheda in the 1840s named Mr. McEntegart. I have only two references so far to Mr McEntegart playing the harp, and neither is entirely unambiguous or satisfactory. I have also found a number of other references to Mr. McEntegart from Drogheda performing concerts on piano, guitar, and singing. I suspect these may all be the same person. This post is to line up all of these references, and to try and work out what is going on, and to make some speculative suggestions about his life and music.

Brian Bowman

Brian Bowman was a harper during the mid 19th century. So far I have only one reference to him, and it is not very satisfactory. This post is to discuss the reference, and the context, and to see what we can usefully say about Brian Bowman.

header photo © Anthere CC-BY

Na gcláirseoirí agus an Ghaeilge / The harpers and the Irish language

One of the columns in my timeline of traditional Irish harpers through the long 19th century is for whether a harper did or did not have the Irish language. This post is to expand on that, to discuss which of the old harpers had Irish, which of them didn’t, and how we can understand the decline and suppression of the wire-strung Irish harp tradition alongside the decline and revival of the Irish language.

Halpin

Halpin was apparently a traditional Irish harper in Drogheda in the 1840s. This post is a somewhat desperate attempt to say something useful about him.

New harp for sale

Pedro Ferreira has made a very interesting and nice new harp which he is offering for sale brand new. This is an unusual opportunity to acquire a new instrument from a respected maker of Irish harps, because normally instruments like this are only available as special commissions, with a waiting list.

Here is what Pedro has to say about it:

Thomas Branagan

Thomas Branagan was a traditional Irish harper in the mid to late 19th century, who played at events in County Louth. This post is to discuss the references to him, and to start thinking about who he was and what we can say about him.

Peter Dowdall

Peter Dowdall was a traditional Irish harper, who lived into the early years of the 20th century. This post is to try and track down some information about him, to start to tell his life story.

O’Connor from County Tyrone

The piper and scholar Jimmy O’Brein Moran told me about a mention of a harper in a piping manuscript in the National Library in Dublin. I went and looked at the manuscript. This post is to discuss what (if anything) we can usefully say about the harper.

Patrick Byrne part 12: Scotland and Ireland, 1852

header image adapted from SNPG PGP HA 460 (used under license CC-BY-NC).

This post continues with the laborious process of trying to follow Patrick Byrne’s touring itinerary. This post covers 1852, when he went to Edinburgh and Fife, and then returned to Dublin and Monaghan.