HARP, a musical instrument of the stringed kind, of a triangular figure, and held upright between the legs of the performer.

Papias and Du Cange conceive the harp to have taken its name from the Arpii, a people of Italy, who were supposed to have been the first who invented it, and from whom it was borrowed by other nations. Menage derives the word from the Latin hαrpa, and that from the German herp or harp; others deduce it from the Latin carpo, because touched or thrummed with the fingers. Dr Hickes derives it from harpa or hearpa, which signifies the same thing. The English priest who wrote the life of St Dunstan, and who lived in the tenth century, says (cap. ii. n. 12), Sumpsit securn ex more citharam suam, quam paterna lingua hearpam vocamus ; thus intimating that the word is of Anglo-Saxon origin.

The harp was the favourite musical instrument of the Britons and other northern nations in the middle ages. This is evident from their laws, and from every passage in their history in which there is any allusion to music. By the laws of Wales, a harp was one of the three things which were necessary to constitute a gentleman or a freeman; and none could pretend to that character who had not one of these favourite instruments, or could not play upon it. By the same laws, to prevent slaves from pretending to be gentlemen, it was expressly forbidden to teach or to permit them to play upon the harp; and none but the king, the king’s musicians, and gentlemen, were allowed to have harps in their possession. A gentleman’s harp was not liable to be seized for debt, because the want of it would have degraded him from his rank, and reduced him to the condition of a slave. The harp was in no less estimation, and in universal use, amongst the Saxons and Danes. Those who played this instrument were declared gentlemen by law; their persons were esteemed inviolable, and secured from injuries by very severe penalties; and they were readily admitted into the highest company, and treated with distinguished marks of respect wherever they appeared.

There is some diversity in the structure of harps. That which is called the triple harp has ninety-seven strings or chords in three rows, extending from C in the tenor cliff to double G in alt, making five octaves; the middle row is for the semitones, and the two outside rows are perfect unisons. On the bass side, which is played with the right hand, there are thirty-six strings; on the treble side, twenty-six; and in the middle row thirty-five strings. There are two rows of pins or screws on the right side, serving to keep the strings tight in their holes, which are fastened at the other end to three rows of pins on the upper side. The harp has been in some degree improved by the addition of eight strings to the unison, viz. from E to double F in alt. This instrument is struck with the finger and thumb of both hands. Its music is much like that of the spinet, all its strings going from semitone to semitone; and hence some have called it an inverted spinet. It is capable of a much greater degree of perfection than the lute.

King David is usually painted with a harp in his hands; but we have no testimony in all antiquity that the Hebrew harp, called chinnor, in any respect resembled ours. On a Hebrew medal of Simon Maccabaeus we observe two sorts of musical instruments; but they are both of them very different from our harp, and only consist of three or four strings. All authors agree that our harp is very different from the lyra, cithara, or barbiton of the Romans. Fortunatus (lib. vii. carm. 8) mentions that it was an instrument in use amongst the barbarians:

Romanusque lyra, plaudat tibi barbarus lιαrρα, Graecus Achilliacha, crotta Britanna canat.

BcU-Harp, a musical instrument of the string kind, so called from the common players swinging it about, as a bell on its basis. It is about three feet in length; its strings, which are of no determinate number, are of brass or steel wire, fixed at one end, and stretched across the sound-board by screws fixed at the other. It takes in four octaves, according to the number of the strings, which are struck only with the thumbs, the right hand playing the treble and the left hand the bass; and in order to draw the sound the clearer, the thumbs are armed with a little wire pin. This may perhaps be the lyra or cithara of the ancients; but we find no mention made of it under the name it now bears, which must be allowed to be modern.