Diorama – Simon Chadwick

Tom Hardy

Tom Hardy was a traditional Irish harper in Belfast in the second half of the 19th century. We don’t have a lot of information about him; we have only a few scattered sources. This means that any attempt to tell his life story will have more speculation and guesswork than hard facts. But I think there is enough to try. We can always come back later to add new information or to correct wrong guesses.

Hugh Dornan

Hugh Dornan was a traditional Irish harper in the early to mid 19th century. I thought at first that we knew almost nothing about him, and that this would be a very short post, but as I have started to line up the evidence it seems we may have quite a lot of information.

Roger Begley

Roger Begley was a blind traditional Irish harper from Belfast. He married a Dublin girl and they went to live in England.

I had not heard of Roger Begley until a few years ago. His name doesn’t appear in any of the books or articles about the Irish harp tradition. This post summarises what I have found from digging in the archives, to try and give us a picture of his life.