In 1937 Éamon de Valera, then Taoiseach asked Dominions Secretary Malcolm MacDonald if the harp quarter could be removed from the Royal Standard on the grounds that the Irish people had not given their consent to the Irish emblem being included.

* The harp ( a traditional Irish symbol but not the Brian Boru harp used as an official emblem in the Republic )

Earlier Irish Free State boxes, such as the large A size box seen below, have the elaborate wreathed harp emblem on the door.

The harp was adopted as the emblem of the Irish Free State when it separated from the United Kingdom in 1922.

The harp is also a stringed instrument, but is not a member of or homogenous with the violin family and is not considered part of the string choir.

Bragi is shown with a harp and accompanied by his wife Iðunn in this 19th-century painting by Nils Blommér.

David is described as someone renowned for his skill at playing the harp, and consequently summoned to Saul's court to calm his moods.

The instrument is usually acoustic and the harp strings are usually tuned to lower notes than the guitar strings, for an added bass range.

Normally there is neither fingerboard nor frets behind the harp strings.

The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard.

A person who plays the harp is called a harpist or harper.

In blues music, the harmonica is casually referred to as a " blues harp " or " harp ", but it is a free reed wind instrument ; not a stringed instrument, and is therefore not a true harp.

The body is hollow and when a taut string is plucked, the body resonates, projecting sound both inward towards the harp player through a series of usually oval openings ( whose principal purpose is to allow access to the strings and only secondarily to enhance resonance ) and, much more importantly and powerfully, outward through the flexible and taut-strung sounding board.

The longest side of the harp is called the column or pillar.

The Triangular Frame harp is depicted in sculpture from the 8th century Pictish stones in Scotland and in manuscripts ( i. e. the Utrecht Psalter ) from the early 9th century France.

In Perú harp is used commonly in andean music called Huayno.

In southern Mexico ( Chiapas ), there is a very different indigenous style of harp music.

In ancient and medieval times, stringed instruments such as the harp, lyre and lute were used with psalms and hymns.

There was an ancient Chinese harp called konghou ; the name is also now used for a modern Chinese instrument which is being revived.

The fifth finger may also have been used on earlier, more lightly strung modern harps: Madame de Genlis, for example, in her Méthode, published in Paris in the early nineteenth century, promotes the use of all five fingers, while Roslyn Rensch suggests that Mlle de Guînes, the harpist for whom Mozart wrote his Concerto for Flute and Harp, might occasionally have used all five fingers when playing the harp.

Franz Liszt was seminal in finding uses for the harp in his orchestral music, and Mendelssohn and Schubert used it in theatrical music or oratorios.

Ludwig Minkus was celebrated for his harp cadenzas, most notably the Variation de la Reine du jour from his ballet La Nuit et le Jour ( 1881 ), the elaborate entr ' acte composed for Albert Zabel from his ballet Roxana ( 1878 ), and numerous passages found in his score for the ballet La Bayadère, which in some passages were used to represent a veena which was used on stage as a prop.

The harp has been used as a political symbol of Ireland for centuries.

The harp is also traditionally used on the flag of Leinster.

Since 1922, the government of Ireland has used a similar left-facing harp, based on the Trinity College Harp in the Library of Trinity College Dublin as its state symbol.

The harp is also used extensively as a corporate logo — for both private and government organisations.

For instance, the Irish drink Guinness uses a harp, facing right and less detailed than the version used on the state arms.

Guinness started using the harp as an image on its labels in 1862 and registered two trademarks in London in 1876, both of which used the harp as part of the image.

The harp is also used as the logo for League of Ireland football team Finn Harps, who are Donegal's senior soccer club.

The harmonica, also called French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll.

This harp can be used for any style, including Celtic, classical, jazz, or blues ( commonly in third position ).

Sonny Boy Williamson II used the possibilities of hand effects to give a talkative feel to his harp playing.

Wooden pegs and harp pegs are also used, but both can still cause tuning problems in damper climates unless made with great skill.

Since the mid-1980s, Peart has used MIDI trigger pads to trigger sounds sampled from various pieces of acoustic percussion that would otherwise consume far too much stage area, such as a marimba, harp, temple blocks, triangles, glockenspiel, orchestra bells, tubular bells, and vibraslap as well as other, more esoteric percussion.

Uaithne, also known as " the Four Angled Music ", was a richly ornamented magic harp made of oak which, when the Dagda played it, put the seasons in their correct order ; other accounts tell of it being used to command the order of battle.

A " brace " is used to join multiple staffs that represent a single instrument, such as a piano, organ, harp, or marimba.

improvise cha-chas on the harp ; ;

In the 70s, the Breton Alan Cochevelou ( future Alan Stivell ) began playing a mixed repertoire from the main Celtic countries on the Celtic harp his father created.

The number of harp strings varies greatly, depending on the type of guitar and also the player's personal preference.

Some colloquial equivalents are slide, sweep ( referring to the ' discrete glissando ' effects on guitar & harp respectively ), bend, or ' smear '.

Prescriptive attempts to distinguish the glissando from the portamento by limiting the former to the filling in of discrete intermediate pitches on instruments like the piano, harp, and fretted stringed instruments have run up against established usage of instruments like the trombone and timpani.

Depending on its size, which varies, a harp may be played while held in the lap or while it stands on a table, or on the floor.

On smaller harps, like the folk harp, the core string material will typically be the same for all strings on a given harp.

The original type was the arched harp as seen at Choghâ Miš and on later third millennium seals ( fig.

File: Egyptian harp. jpg | An ancient Egyptian harp on display in the British Museum

These harps can only play in a single key during any given performance, though any string on a harp can be tuned to a corresponding sharp or flat before a performance and then be returned to its regular tension ( key ) afterwards with little effort.

" The strings run in two divided ranks making it a double harp, they do not end in a soundboard but are held in notches on a bridge making it a bridge harp, they originate from a string arm or neck and cross a bridge directly supported by a resonating chamber making it a lute too.

The Welsh triple harp and early Irish and Scottish harps, however, are traditionally placed on the left shoulder.

Three strings on the pedal harp have no pedal tuning mechanism: the two lowest strings ( contrabass C and D ) and the highest string ( G ).

Debussy can be said to have put the harp on the map in his many works that use one or more harps.

The greatest influence on use of the harp has always been the availability of fine harps and skilled players, and the great increase of them in the U. S. of the 20th century resulted in its spread into popular music.

Art in America was the first known rock band featuring a pedal harp to appear on a major record label, and released only one record, in 1983.

Sierra Casady, of the freak-folk group CocoRosie plays harp on several of their songs.

Often the folk harp is played by beginners who wish to move on to the pedal harp at a later stage, or by musicians who simply prefer the smaller size or different sounds.