My interests in the autoharp and Irish traditional music (ITM) should be apparent from the topics of the most recent dozen or so posts on this blog. I’ve approached them separately as a musicologist specializing in the history of musical instruments. This post marks a shift toward their intersection in performance from the perspective of a musician whose journey started on the autoharp in 1952 and found its way into Celtic music a decade later via the Highland bagpipes. I’ve since become comfortably conversant with the Irish idiom on the tin whistle and would like to be able to say the same about the autoharp.

Irish dance tunes and airs figure prominently in its repertoire but the instrument is not among those normally associated with ITM in its home country. The first documented appearance of the autoharp in a traditional Irish context that I’ve located so far was at the National Festival of Traditional Irish Music and Song (Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann) in Kilrush, County Clare, in 1967. Several musicians with such instruments are seen gathering for the event. One of them participates in a performance of the air, The Mountains Of Pomeroy, first heard in the background in the following snippet and then brought into view.