Airmedh Discovers the Dagda’s Harp
Airmedh was enchanted by the cache of harps she had found in the wagon in the Duke of Queensberry’s coach house. As a second-order Druid, or “ovate,” as she called herself, she had, of course, long ago mastered the craft of the first-order Druid, the “bard.” Airmedh knew all about druids from a minute study of Iolo Morganwg, John Tolland, and James MacPherson, whom she had read in English books obtained for her by her grandmother. She had only read the ancient teachers in translated excerpts, but, through Tolland, especially, she was familiar with Strabo and Julius Caesar. Her lack of classical education annoyed her, but luckily her edition of Tolland had footnotes which provided translations, in places where he quoted the originals.
Air suffered from the disadvantages of the self-taught, however, not least in terms of the limited harp-playing repertoire she had been able to piece together, growing up in France in a conservative Catholic household. Access to ancient bardic material had been thin on the ground. Air was overwhelmed by this sudden almost volcanic eruption of materials to study and materials to experiment with musically. She found herself torn between trying to unpack the various harps, to the best of her ability, and riffling through the accompanying manuscripts in their protective waxed envelopes. Sitting eventually in the middle of the wagon, she found herself doing a bit of both—pulling out a harp here, plucking a few notes as she squinted at a manuscript there.
Airmedh felt a little anxious as she considered the amount of material before her, the time it would take her to figure it out using dictionaries and notes, and the potential that she might be interrupted. The coachhouse didn’t seem to be used frequently, so she might have a week to sort through all of this, if she were lucky. But that was not enough time! She almost stamped her foot in frustration at her inability to take advantage of this cornucopia of ancient lore. She applied herself methodically to the task, however, determined to get what she could from the opportunity.
As she worked, Airmedh found she could not even budge some of the harps she could see, since they were taller in some cases than her exactly-six-foot-high staff, and encrusted with gold and bejeweled statuary. These concert-style “pedal” harps were topped in the front with a full “crown,” some showing a regal face peering out from amongst figured leaves. Some harps were decorated with stylized portraits of women players, some with men. Other harps built in the simpler “Lever” style had no crown, but had soundboards carved, embossed, or painted with Celtic symbols she recognized as awens or triskelions. These were slightly smaller than the pedal harps, but still quite unwieldy to be lifted solo over the side of a wagon. Behind these, Air found some even smaller lap-style lever harps. She nodded in delighted approval. She could picture her ancient bardic fore-bearers slinging these harps on their backs as they traveled throughout the land. The carriage also seemed to be equipped with a plethora of more unorthodox harp relatives, such as lyres, zithers, and dulcimers.
Air allowed her ecstasy to fade for a moment as she saw this last. “Ho hum. Play dull some more.” she said. She heaved the dulcimer over the edge of the carriage and it bounced gently on the carriage house floor.
But she soon regained her good humor. After a few minutes to survey the wagon, and a few more to make room in the carriage by dispensing with some of the less interesting instruments, Air found a box in a corner which was locked and wrapped both lengthwise and width-wise with a heavy chain. She efficiently picked the lock with a hairpin and unwrapped the chains. She thought it was a bit stupid of the owner of this harp to use so much chain but only have the one lock. Really. But she was interrupted in this scornful train of thought by finding within the box an exquisite instrument covered in intricately figured gold and embedded with what looked like valuable jewels. She tapped it with her finger-nail—oak by the sound of it, and not willow, the more usual material for a sounding board. Dagda’s harp was gilded oak! She thought excitedly. Air was expert on all of the Tuatha de Dannaan, and she considered them all to be members of her extended family. Next to the oak harp was a musical manuscript which was marked with a number of different scratches, and a repeating phrase Air puzzled over.
“Oh!” She sighed happily. “That’s incredible! That says ‘Fingal!’ Fingal! This must be an undiscovered Ossian manuscript which MacPherson never had a chance to see!” Airmedh’s non-comprehensive collection of antiquarian sources included at least James MacPherson’s translations of an ancient Celtic epic bard he had discovered, Ossian, whose works had been hidden for millennia under the boards of what turned out later to be MacPherson’s own house in the Scottish borderlands! These translations of the rediscovered Ossian had in turn been translated again into almost every other modern European language, and even into Chinese. Napoleon and Diderot loved them, and even Voltaire wrote parodies.
Air knew quite a bit of MacPherson by heart, and she immediately determined to play the first forty verses of Fingal on a harp that was worthy of such material.
