The Queen Mary Harp
About 1450
Among the treasures of medieval Scotland is a small, richly carved harp, one of only three Gaelic harps to survive from the Middle Ages and the most beautifully decorated of them. It was made in the west Highlands or Argyll around the middle of the fifteenth century, with a soundbox hollowed from a single block of hornbeam, a curved forepillar and a neck that once held about thirty brass or silver strings. The wood is covered with carved decoration: interlace, animals, geometric patterns and a small carved figure, and there are traces of the gilding and paint that once made it shine. Instruments like this were played by professional harpers in the halls of Gaelic chiefs.
Look at the shape and the carving. The forepillar curves outward in the characteristic Gaelic style, and the soundbox is narrow and deep, built to give the metal strings a bright, ringing tone that could carry across a noisy hall. The carved panels on the front include a pattern of intersecting circles, a wyvern and a crowned figure, and the ornament runs right round the instrument. The harp would have been played resting on the left shoulder, with the fingernails, in the tradition later described by travellers in the Highlands. Metal fittings show where the tuning pins sat.
The harp takes its name from a tradition that Mary, Queen of Scots, gave it to Beatrix Gardyne of Banchory during a hunting trip to Perthshire in 1563. The story cannot be proved, but the harp does seem to have passed through the Robertson family of Lude and it was already a famous relic in the eighteenth century, when a Jacobite laird is said to have removed its gold fittings to pay for his cause. It came to the museum in the twentieth century. It matters because it is the best evidence we have of a musical culture that was central to Gaelic Scotland and that was later almost lost. The memorable detail is the carved wyvern with its curled tail.
Did You Know? Tradition says Mary, Queen of Scots, gave the harp to a Perthshire lady during a hunting trip in 1563, which is how it got its name.
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