Belfast – Simon Chadwick

a blind girl in the South of Ireland

“There is a blind girl in the South of Ireland who plays on the old wire-stringed Irish harp” says a newspaper from one hundred and twenty-six years ago, without giving us any more information at all. This post is for her, so that we can try to work out who she might have been, or to try and sketch the wider context that might give us a clue as to where she might have come from and what she might have been doing.

Walker

Walker was an amateur self-taught player of the traditional wire-strung Irish harp in the mid 19th century. This post is to draw together references to him and to try and say something useful.

John McMullan

John McMullan (or McMullen) was a traditional Irish harper in the early to mid 19th century. This post is to gather the few references we have, to try and say something useful about his life and music.

Richard McCloskey

I have one single reference to a harper in Belfast called Richard McCloskey. I am not sure if he is real or not. This post is to discuss the reference. If in the future we discover any other references, we can add them as comments to this post.

John Wallace

John Wallace was learning to play the traditional Irish wire-strung harp in Belfast in 1810. We know basically nothing about him apart from that. This post is just to put down a marker for him. If we find any more information we can add it to the bottom.

Sally Moore

Sally Moore was a blind traditional Irish harper in Belfast in the mid 19th century. We don’t have very much information about her. This post is to collate the references and to try and say something useful about her. Hopefully in time more references will be found.

Edward O’Neil

Edward O’Neil was learning to play the traditional wire-strung Irish harp in Belfast in 1810. This post is to try and say something useful about him.

Dennis Hampson

Dennis Hampson (also known as Denis, Hempson, O’Hampsey, and other variants) was a traditional Irish harper in the 18th century. He lived through into the early 19th century and so he has a place in my “Long 19th Century” project.

Thomas Shea

Thomas Shea was a traditional Irish harper in County Kerry in the 18th century. He was still alive (though very old) in 1792 and so he gets a place in my Long 19th Century project, about harpers who were active between 1792 and 1909.

Header image courtesy of the National Library of Ireland.

Thomas Brown

Thomas Brown was a traditional Irish harper in the mid 19th century. This post is to collate the couple of references we have to him, to try and tell a bit of his life story.