Slowly getting caught up at work from four days off. Who could have thought so much could pile up so quickly?
Anyhow, scooted out to visit with a friend for one of my very favoritest things to do up here - sit and sew and chat over tea. Conversations meander as they do, and ended up skirting at one point the Test Acts and related strictures of the period.
"All they had to do," she says referring to some obscure act I can't recall, "is show up for services.. once a year, I think it was? They didn't even have to participate."
"But they were being told they needed to signal assent to something they didn't believe," I answer - "... I can understand how that got them riled up."
"But they didn't even have to do anything.. all they had to do was toe the line for appearance's sake."
"Enh, I'm Scotch Irish. We're not real good at toeing lines."
With a smile she answers back.. "...battle lines maybe... hrmm... no, no not even that."
:)
... and yes, the first of the pilot thing from Valdez... two weeks late now(?).. in another couple days. Whee!
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Home for a rest...
..those waiting on emails or updates will have to wait a bit longer, I fear. After way too much time scaring at a screen at work, it's time to go be restful for a while. See y'all Tuesday.
In the meantime, here's something fun. I ran across these guys on the OBOD podcast a couple weeks ago, and immediately fell in love with this work. (The controversy that spilled out afterwards is worth a google in its own right, and reflects somewhat on our conversation of last Saturday. )
In the meantime, here's something fun. I ran across these guys on the OBOD podcast a couple weeks ago, and immediately fell in love with this work. (The controversy that spilled out afterwards is worth a google in its own right, and reflects somewhat on our conversation of last Saturday. )
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Peace of the Desert.
After Matt's kind comment, I thought I'd flesh out another bit of brain-detrius - varied thoughts on the boundary between cultures traditionally Christian and those Muslim.
Like many of us in the immediate post 9/11 scream of why?? went to the source. I read of abrogation, of the hadith, and puzzled through a fair amount of the Quran (albeit in English, yes). Ultimately though, while I'm still rather partial to the mystic branches as reflected in Rumi's poetry, the corpus of the faith itself leaves me cold.
I find I can't help but agree that it's not that Islam needs a Reformation, but rather that Qutb's followers are Islam's Reformation. When Martin Luther, John Knox, and all the Reformers at the start of the bloody schismatic centuries decided on a path of Sola Scriptura, they found Christ of the Sermon on the Mount. When Qutb dug into the original writings of Islam, well... Muhammad's path waded through blood from the start.
That said...
Christianity has long had the saving grace of being separated from the realities of personal and political survival by a long tradition of separated spheres of influence. To the Church lay matters of spirit - to the Crown lay matters of state. Thus the Church had the luxury to speak to our highest ideals - of mercy unbounded, of universal love and compassion - while the messy, bloody business of killing to secure a border, maintain a trade route, defend a people - the causes both right and wrong through the millennea - all could be handled at a safe distance by the worldly sovereign in his own sphere. The voice of the Church informed political opinion, but it wielded no sword itself.
At least, that was the ideal. That as men and women in the mortal world, we fall short - often far short - of our own professed ideals is a simple fact of life..
In contrast however, the theocracies of the Islamic world had no such distinction - thus the God of Muhammad could not help but be tainted by the spilled blood of statecraft.
In the end, perhaps my thinking on the subject is irredeemably colored by the Narnia books of my childhood, for no matter what I learn in mind as an adult, my soul keeps hearing the words of Aslan....
...I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.
While I find personally find that the universalist parable of the elephant grows more trite as decades pass, the fact remains that the Divine remains definitionally beyond the human compass of understanding. And yet, how we grapple with and describe those glimmers through the dark glass still matters somehow. It matters because it shapes how I respond to my own soul, and to the souls of my neighbors.
Do I value you as a Divine Creation, however you've been wounded in the past? Can I do my own simple part in easing the accumulation of wound-for-wound, piling on top of each other over the centuries?
... and can I do all that without losing my own place to stand?*
=============
* edit - I'm fair certain Christ would leave off that last sentence. But then, I'm not Christ. :)
Like many of us in the immediate post 9/11 scream of why?? went to the source. I read of abrogation, of the hadith, and puzzled through a fair amount of the Quran (albeit in English, yes). Ultimately though, while I'm still rather partial to the mystic branches as reflected in Rumi's poetry, the corpus of the faith itself leaves me cold.
I find I can't help but agree that it's not that Islam needs a Reformation, but rather that Qutb's followers are Islam's Reformation. When Martin Luther, John Knox, and all the Reformers at the start of the bloody schismatic centuries decided on a path of Sola Scriptura, they found Christ of the Sermon on the Mount. When Qutb dug into the original writings of Islam, well... Muhammad's path waded through blood from the start.
That said...
Christianity has long had the saving grace of being separated from the realities of personal and political survival by a long tradition of separated spheres of influence. To the Church lay matters of spirit - to the Crown lay matters of state. Thus the Church had the luxury to speak to our highest ideals - of mercy unbounded, of universal love and compassion - while the messy, bloody business of killing to secure a border, maintain a trade route, defend a people - the causes both right and wrong through the millennea - all could be handled at a safe distance by the worldly sovereign in his own sphere. The voice of the Church informed political opinion, but it wielded no sword itself.
At least, that was the ideal. That as men and women in the mortal world, we fall short - often far short - of our own professed ideals is a simple fact of life..
In contrast however, the theocracies of the Islamic world had no such distinction - thus the God of Muhammad could not help but be tainted by the spilled blood of statecraft.
In the end, perhaps my thinking on the subject is irredeemably colored by the Narnia books of my childhood, for no matter what I learn in mind as an adult, my soul keeps hearing the words of Aslan....
...I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.
While I find personally find that the universalist parable of the elephant grows more trite as decades pass, the fact remains that the Divine remains definitionally beyond the human compass of understanding. And yet, how we grapple with and describe those glimmers through the dark glass still matters somehow. It matters because it shapes how I respond to my own soul, and to the souls of my neighbors.
Do I value you as a Divine Creation, however you've been wounded in the past? Can I do my own simple part in easing the accumulation of wound-for-wound, piling on top of each other over the centuries?
... and can I do all that without losing my own place to stand?*
=============
* edit - I'm fair certain Christ would leave off that last sentence. But then, I'm not Christ. :)
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Vitality
Yes, we'll get to the Alaskan pilots, I promise.
I wanted first though to talk about something that's been rumbling around my noggin for the last several weeks now, and Tam's reference to Mark Steyn a few days really nudged it loose.
The question is that of civilizational vitality - a sense of the willingness to protect one's society - no, that's not quite it. Rather, that one's culture is worth protecting. I think on Steyn's notions of civilizational exhaustion, echoed across the zeitgeist of our time, and well-treated in Dan Carlin's recent question, are we as tough as our grandparents?
It's not even a question of physical toughness though - that's easily enough regained over a few lean years. It's more the psychological sense that yes, this is a culture and civilization worth preserving that strikes me as the central question. Say what you will about the evils of colonialism and progressive nationalism, they both at least fed the sense of civilizational self-worth. In the wake of the last two world wars and the Cold War though, it seems we've spent the last half century atoning by praising a diversity that celebrates every culture but our own.
A necessary balancing? Time's pendulum at work? Perhaps... but I can't help but wonder what happens when the pendulum starts to swing from the constant self-flagellation, and more and more folk in the Western world find themselves feeling increasingly strangers in their own ancestral homelands.
As a side note, I can't help but mention being a little disturbed to have several of my history/cultural legacy web searches over the past year get plopped by Google straight into StormFront, and I've heard of several UK pagan-ish musicians feeling a bit violated when organizations like the British BNP seizing on their songs as rallying points. While I've not run across it yet, I'd be shocked if there wasn't some analogue of rising resentment on our own Southwest border.
At some point there's a balance between "this is my cultural heritage, I treasure and value it, and I want to ensure it lives on in future generations" and "get the hell out/get back in 'your place,' you Outsiders." My intuitive sense is that it's a living balance, that what's appropriate in the world of 1947 isn't necessarily appropriate for 2010, and vice versa. But where's the line? How do you preserve the valuable parts of your culture without turning into progressive eugenicists, nazi street thugs, or waking up to a Great White Fleet one morning?
The best answer I have is to just keep retelling the national myths and keeping some sense of the goodness of our national history alive and burning in the heart and the mind. To make them so attractive that new arrivals want to assimilate.
Danged if I know though.
============================
As a footnote, perhaps I'm only noticing it because the question seems to reflect my own internal rumpus of late, as over the last year I've moved to leave behind the "dying to oneself" of doctrinaire Christianity to say "no... no, I want a place at the table to. My self-being as a mutual creation with God has it's own value, and I'll neither squander nor kill it."
It's emotionally riskier, I think.. it's not for nothing that Christ says "place your trust in me" as all things mortal end. And frankly I'm not certain such a perspective has much meaning to it until the self has been beat around the world a bit and maybe even placed on the altar - otherwise it's merely adolescent cockiness.
I'll not pretend to have any great wisdom there, but for what it's worth... those are the questions rumbling around my noggin of late. Well, that and how to get everything done at work so I can finally take a proper vacation. :)
I wanted first though to talk about something that's been rumbling around my noggin for the last several weeks now, and Tam's reference to Mark Steyn a few days really nudged it loose.
The question is that of civilizational vitality - a sense of the willingness to protect one's society - no, that's not quite it. Rather, that one's culture is worth protecting. I think on Steyn's notions of civilizational exhaustion, echoed across the zeitgeist of our time, and well-treated in Dan Carlin's recent question, are we as tough as our grandparents?
It's not even a question of physical toughness though - that's easily enough regained over a few lean years. It's more the psychological sense that yes, this is a culture and civilization worth preserving that strikes me as the central question. Say what you will about the evils of colonialism and progressive nationalism, they both at least fed the sense of civilizational self-worth. In the wake of the last two world wars and the Cold War though, it seems we've spent the last half century atoning by praising a diversity that celebrates every culture but our own.
A necessary balancing? Time's pendulum at work? Perhaps... but I can't help but wonder what happens when the pendulum starts to swing from the constant self-flagellation, and more and more folk in the Western world find themselves feeling increasingly strangers in their own ancestral homelands.
As a side note, I can't help but mention being a little disturbed to have several of my history/cultural legacy web searches over the past year get plopped by Google straight into StormFront, and I've heard of several UK pagan-ish musicians feeling a bit violated when organizations like the British BNP seizing on their songs as rallying points. While I've not run across it yet, I'd be shocked if there wasn't some analogue of rising resentment on our own Southwest border.
At some point there's a balance between "this is my cultural heritage, I treasure and value it, and I want to ensure it lives on in future generations" and "get the hell out/get back in 'your place,' you Outsiders." My intuitive sense is that it's a living balance, that what's appropriate in the world of 1947 isn't necessarily appropriate for 2010, and vice versa. But where's the line? How do you preserve the valuable parts of your culture without turning into progressive eugenicists, nazi street thugs, or waking up to a Great White Fleet one morning?
The best answer I have is to just keep retelling the national myths and keeping some sense of the goodness of our national history alive and burning in the heart and the mind. To make them so attractive that new arrivals want to assimilate.
Danged if I know though.
============================
As a footnote, perhaps I'm only noticing it because the question seems to reflect my own internal rumpus of late, as over the last year I've moved to leave behind the "dying to oneself" of doctrinaire Christianity to say "no... no, I want a place at the table to. My self-being as a mutual creation with God has it's own value, and I'll neither squander nor kill it."
It's emotionally riskier, I think.. it's not for nothing that Christ says "place your trust in me" as all things mortal end. And frankly I'm not certain such a perspective has much meaning to it until the self has been beat around the world a bit and maybe even placed on the altar - otherwise it's merely adolescent cockiness.
I'll not pretend to have any great wisdom there, but for what it's worth... those are the questions rumbling around my noggin of late. Well, that and how to get everything done at work so I can finally take a proper vacation. :)
Friday, May 14, 2010
embarassing software geek secret.....
You know what? If you've got a slightly (rmmm... very?) scatterbrained nature, it can be a challenge to sit at a keyboard all day long while staying focused on making code compile and run proper.
I've found two things really act as a nice big shiny to keep my inner Hammy the Squirrel busy chittering to itself long enough for my logical self to sit down and get some work done...
... 20 oz. Kaladi's mochas and MC Hammer.
*burp*
SO.. if you'll excuse me, I gots some business to take care of...
too legit, too legit to quit....
I've found two things really act as a nice big shiny to keep my inner Hammy the Squirrel busy chittering to itself long enough for my logical self to sit down and get some work done...
... 20 oz. Kaladi's mochas and MC Hammer.
*burp*
SO.. if you'll excuse me, I gots some business to take care of...
too legit, too legit to quit....
Monday, May 10, 2010
The Alaskan Backcountry Pilot, c.2010 (Introduction)
"I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time."
Thucydides I,22
One of the things I have come to believe from an enthusiast's view of history is the great value in the common people of the day setting to paper the daily comings and goings of their time. How many times have I seen a historic reenactor pouring over some obscure paragraph or drawing, trying to get their impression just so? And yet, we all live in the great river of history, and we ourselves will one day be posterity's fascinating - if at times barbaric - ancestors. And so with that - I give you the Alaskan back country pilot, circa AD 2010.*
"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them."Let me begin by saying that I have been repeatedly told that from the foreign perspective, we Americans are viewed as cowboys, much as the archetypal Scot is pictured in kilt and dirk, or the archetypal Englishman in tweed and pipe. I confess I don't know yet from first hand experience how true that is, but it would square with our own media self-identity from the time in the middle of the last century when we jumped (or were pushed) full force into the dominant position on the international stage. Matt Dillon, John Wayne... those were Americans. Of all the myriad occupations of Victorian-era America, from bricklayer to congressman to engineer to ditchdigger, it was the cowboy that came to represent us. His was the frankly rather low status, low paid, "blue collar" reality onto which the mythos of the self-reliant, proud, resourceful, honorable American was painted.
With heartfelt, loving respect to Brigid's rodeo competitors, I believe the modern successor to the reality behind the archetype is no longer the mounted cowpokes of now-settled Colorado, Montana, and such - but the cubdrivers of Alaska.
The smells are musty used nylon and Gore-tex, fresh-caught salmon, and avgas over sagebrush, leather, and horse sweat. But I think the spirit now is much the same as it was a century ago, in the real Old West of America.
And so... tales from the "rodeo."
.... to be continued.
====================
* As a disclaimer, I've no illusions that I'm any Thucydides or de Toqueville - only one person of many that happened to be lucky enough to get a glimpse of the last rays of the twilight of the American frontier. As such, I write here less for friends - who know this world well enough without my speaking of it - or for family - for whom this is but one more letter home - but rather for future generations. In the unlikely event this piece of digital flotsam comes to their notice in the great mass of data my generation is presently uploading, I hope that it will provide the kind of information my people now ache to discover about their own ancestors.
And as an aside - I urge each of you to provide similar missives for those pieces of history you yourselves have seen. Remember... it's all mundane and dull while you're living it. It's fascinating and exotic only when it's been lost to the ages.
Thucydides I,22
One of the things I have come to believe from an enthusiast's view of history is the great value in the common people of the day setting to paper the daily comings and goings of their time. How many times have I seen a historic reenactor pouring over some obscure paragraph or drawing, trying to get their impression just so? And yet, we all live in the great river of history, and we ourselves will one day be posterity's fascinating - if at times barbaric - ancestors. And so with that - I give you the Alaskan back country pilot, circa AD 2010.*
"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them."
With heartfelt, loving respect to Brigid's rodeo competitors, I believe the modern successor to the reality behind the archetype is no longer the mounted cowpokes of now-settled Colorado, Montana, and such - but the cubdrivers of Alaska.
The smells are musty used nylon and Gore-tex, fresh-caught salmon, and avgas over sagebrush, leather, and horse sweat. But I think the spirit now is much the same as it was a century ago, in the real Old West of America.
And so... tales from the "rodeo."
.... to be continued.
====================
* As a disclaimer, I've no illusions that I'm any Thucydides or de Toqueville - only one person of many that happened to be lucky enough to get a glimpse of the last rays of the twilight of the American frontier. As such, I write here less for friends - who know this world well enough without my speaking of it - or for family - for whom this is but one more letter home - but rather for future generations. In the unlikely event this piece of digital flotsam comes to their notice in the great mass of data my generation is presently uploading, I hope that it will provide the kind of information my people now ache to discover about their own ancestors.
And as an aside - I urge each of you to provide similar missives for those pieces of history you yourselves have seen. Remember... it's all mundane and dull while you're living it. It's fascinating and exotic only when it's been lost to the ages.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Valdez...
... you know, it's a curious fact of Valdez Alaska that you can be sitting on a bed in the second story of a B&B, looking out the window.... and not be able to see sky. The whole frame of the window is taken up by a honkin' big mountain. It's all kinds of cool, but a wee bit... odd.
Oh, and the fly-in was awesome to. Pictures later. :)
Oh, and the fly-in was awesome to. Pictures later. :)
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
"Celtic" lap harps, nylon and wire. Part III: Choosing a harp.
So, all this is very interesting from academic point of view, sure.Now let's get started with the choosing of a harp.
First... and answer honestly here - why are you drawn to the instrument? What do you want to do? More specifically - are you already a musician (especially a classically trained one) who wants to get back to your roots a bit? Do you want to do music therapy with it? Performance? How historically authentic do you want to be - or is that important to you at all? How much traveling do you intend to do with the instrument? A little soul-searching now will save you quite bit of "not quite right" horsetrading in the future.
So.. let's get the first decision out of the way first - nylon or wire?
If it's for pre-19th c. Gaelic historical reenactment, obviously you want wire. If you're drawn to the earlier "Celtic" legacy, then you probably want to go wire, although the neo-Celtic revival has been around long enough the gut/nylon harps have a century-and-change legacy all of their own these days.
If on the other hand you're a performing musician and want to play with others on a variety of instruments - and not be limited to earlier tunes - you almost certainly want to go nylon. The ability to change key quickly and easily by flipping a few levers makes a huge difference*. For that matter, it seems to me the nylon harps "play nice" with other instruments better. Perhaps it's only a matter of taste, but the clarsach seems a little more of an attention-hog to me. Likewise music therapy... I'll not say you can't sound brash on nylon or soothing on wire.. but the former is considerably gentler by nature**.
Next... size.
Immediately you face a tradeoff. Portability versus range - you don't get both. Some models are more compact for a given octave range than others - Stoney End's Eve for instance has the same 22 strings as their Brittany, but is considerably easier to pack about. Also, as a general rule a wire strung harp will be more compact that a nylon harp of the same range.
My first teacher insisted on at least 29 strings, and Bunting notes at the harp festival - the twilight hurrah of the Gaelic harp - that no harp had less than thirty strings. (Ironically, the archetypal "Celtic" harps we envision, the "Trinity College" and "Queen Mary" apparently each originally had 29. )
I presently have a 22 string wire strung harp, and while it is portable, I sorely miss that last octave - I have to transpose everything I study up an octave, and can't work the caomhliughe "sisters" in. So in around a year, I'll be replacing it with a measured more-or-less replica of the Queen Mary from William McDonald.
On the other hand, if portability is your first concern - and especially if you're using nylon - 29 gets overly bulky very quickly. There are only seven more strings on a Lorraine than an Eve - but the former is a full foot and a half higher by the numbers, but the subjective difference feels much more than that. It's not something you'll take with you to the park for a casual afternoon.
Finally, maker.
As you can tell, for nylon strung production instruments I'm really partial to Stoney End/Hobgoblin. I once had the opportunity to wander around a harp shop in Seattle, and try almost everything on the floor. The Stoney Ends easily sounded as good as fancy models costing three times as much.. better in some cases, at least to my ear. So if you're going factory... Stoney End is a great choice I think.
That said, for a *small* harp I wouldn't choose the Brittany again - it's at that awkward size where it's too big to travel easily, but too small to give you a lot of range. In that respect, you sort of get the worst of both worlds. It is lovely though, with a neo-Celtic feel to it, whereas the Eve is more Gothic/continental European in inspiration.
If I was to buy a factory-made nylon-string harp today***, it would be either an Eve or Lorraine from SE, depending on whether I was looking big or small. I've heard the music therapy folks love the "harpsicles" though I've no personal experience with them.
For metal strung... I simply haven't seen a factory made instrument that comes close to the originals. Doesn't mean they aren't out there - but I've not seen them.
Finally - avoid the various "rosewood/carved/whatever" Celtic harps from Pakistan on eBay. The little ones sound like fishing line tied to a cardboardbox. A friend has one of the larger ones, and while it's not as bad... it's not really good, either.
Now. Private makers.
For metal strung, you'll pretty much have to go this way. Pretty much every "clairseach" I've seen from a factory maker the last time I looked around... wasn't. They're regular modern nylon harps with metal strings. And there is a difference.
So.. private makers. The only maker's work I have much experience with is James of Folc Harps. As I've said, the range I'm working with now is frustrating, and there are some distinctive ahistoric elements to his pattern if that matters to you****. However, the sound is entrancing, especially as the strings you didn't touch start to vibrate in sympathy to your playing. He's truly a wonder to deal with, an excellent craftsman, and his work sounds beautiful. I hear tell there's a little magic in that wood to. ;)
I can say William MacDonald is a pleasure to deal with, though I'll not take delivery until around next spring, and can't firsthand say anything of his work. His family sure plays 'em nice though.
Simon Chadwick swears by Davy Patton, and American luthier David Kortier makes student instruments for the Historical Harp Society of Ireland. I've no experience with harps of either make. Here in the US, the two leading lights of the wire-strung harp, Ann Heymann and Patrick Ball both play instruments by Jay Witcher.... but if you know that name, you didn't need this little 101 anyhow. :)
So.. boil it all down?
For me, the choice is presently metal strung, and eventually a historic replica. But my interest is more in the broader bardic tradition than harping as a discrete pursuit. This instrument is a very important, treasured part of that tradition.. but it is only a part.
Your own journey will mean your own choices. I do hope though that this has helped.
Part I: The modern Celtic harping tradition.
Part II: Playing differences, nylon and wire.
Part III: Choosing a Celtic harp.
=====================================
* If you do go nylon, you'll probably want sharping levers at least on your C and F strings - a good deal of what we know now as "Celtic Music" is derived from 18th c. or so fiddle tunes, and so often is in G or D major (both easy keys on the fiddle). You may also want to add levers to the B strings as well - I've seen quite a few harpers keep their B strings tuned flat, then brought back to natural with the levers so as to be able to easily drop down into F. How many more levers past that is a question for your wallet and your need for variety.
**As an aside, it's much easier to see what you're doing on a nylon-strung folk harp. The strings are color-coded - Cs are red, Fs are blue - so it's easy to see where you need to drop your fingers for those chords. Now, you can use a paint pen on the strings of a wire-strung harp - that's a neat trick Patrick Ball was kind enough to show us groupies after his show last year when we mobbed him for questions. However, nylon strings are both thicker and somewhat translucent, so they're much easier to see in dim light. Oh... and the paint wears off in short order.
** Though I doubt now I will. If I find myself aching in the future for a softer sound to replace my old Brittany, now sold off, I would probably choose a hand-made Gothic pattern bray harp. Though that's somewhat beyond the scope of this little posting.
*** I'd really recommend a look around James' site to get a feel for where he's coming from. His work is not historically precise, nor is it intended to be. This is a limitation if you're trying to recapture the original canon, as reconstructed by Heymann, Chadwick, and others.
If that's less important to you than a magical voice of bronze and wood filling the embracing night... it's no limitation at all. His harps are what they are, and are truly excellent instruments. (And as an aside, only a handful of instruments survived time and the English, so it's entirely possible some of his ideas were tried once upon a time and we'd never know).
First... and answer honestly here - why are you drawn to the instrument? What do you want to do? More specifically - are you already a musician (especially a classically trained one) who wants to get back to your roots a bit? Do you want to do music therapy with it? Performance? How historically authentic do you want to be - or is that important to you at all? How much traveling do you intend to do with the instrument? A little soul-searching now will save you quite bit of "not quite right" horsetrading in the future.
So.. let's get the first decision out of the way first - nylon or wire?
If it's for pre-19th c. Gaelic historical reenactment, obviously you want wire. If you're drawn to the earlier "Celtic" legacy, then you probably want to go wire, although the neo-Celtic revival has been around long enough the gut/nylon harps have a century-and-change legacy all of their own these days.
If on the other hand you're a performing musician and want to play with others on a variety of instruments - and not be limited to earlier tunes - you almost certainly want to go nylon. The ability to change key quickly and easily by flipping a few levers makes a huge difference*. For that matter, it seems to me the nylon harps "play nice" with other instruments better. Perhaps it's only a matter of taste, but the clarsach seems a little more of an attention-hog to me. Likewise music therapy... I'll not say you can't sound brash on nylon or soothing on wire.. but the former is considerably gentler by nature**.
Next... size.
Immediately you face a tradeoff. Portability versus range - you don't get both. Some models are more compact for a given octave range than others - Stoney End's Eve for instance has the same 22 strings as their Brittany, but is considerably easier to pack about. Also, as a general rule a wire strung harp will be more compact that a nylon harp of the same range.
My first teacher insisted on at least 29 strings, and Bunting notes at the harp festival - the twilight hurrah of the Gaelic harp - that no harp had less than thirty strings. (Ironically, the archetypal "Celtic" harps we envision, the "Trinity College" and "Queen Mary" apparently each originally had 29. )
I presently have a 22 string wire strung harp, and while it is portable, I sorely miss that last octave - I have to transpose everything I study up an octave, and can't work the caomhliughe "sisters" in. So in around a year, I'll be replacing it with a measured more-or-less replica of the Queen Mary from William McDonald.
On the other hand, if portability is your first concern - and especially if you're using nylon - 29 gets overly bulky very quickly. There are only seven more strings on a Lorraine than an Eve - but the former is a full foot and a half higher by the numbers, but the subjective difference feels much more than that. It's not something you'll take with you to the park for a casual afternoon.
Finally, maker.
As you can tell, for nylon strung production instruments I'm really partial to Stoney End/Hobgoblin. I once had the opportunity to wander around a harp shop in Seattle, and try almost everything on the floor. The Stoney Ends easily sounded as good as fancy models costing three times as much.. better in some cases, at least to my ear. So if you're going factory... Stoney End is a great choice I think.
That said, for a *small* harp I wouldn't choose the Brittany again - it's at that awkward size where it's too big to travel easily, but too small to give you a lot of range. In that respect, you sort of get the worst of both worlds. It is lovely though, with a neo-Celtic feel to it, whereas the Eve is more Gothic/continental European in inspiration.
If I was to buy a factory-made nylon-string harp today***, it would be either an Eve or Lorraine from SE, depending on whether I was looking big or small. I've heard the music therapy folks love the "harpsicles" though I've no personal experience with them.
For metal strung... I simply haven't seen a factory made instrument that comes close to the originals. Doesn't mean they aren't out there - but I've not seen them.
Finally - avoid the various "rosewood/carved/whatever" Celtic harps from Pakistan on eBay. The little ones sound like fishing line tied to a cardboardbox. A friend has one of the larger ones, and while it's not as bad... it's not really good, either.
Now. Private makers.
For metal strung, you'll pretty much have to go this way. Pretty much every "clairseach" I've seen from a factory maker the last time I looked around... wasn't. They're regular modern nylon harps with metal strings. And there is a difference.
So.. private makers. The only maker's work I have much experience with is James of Folc Harps. As I've said, the range I'm working with now is frustrating, and there are some distinctive ahistoric elements to his pattern if that matters to you****. However, the sound is entrancing, especially as the strings you didn't touch start to vibrate in sympathy to your playing. He's truly a wonder to deal with, an excellent craftsman, and his work sounds beautiful. I hear tell there's a little magic in that wood to. ;)
I can say William MacDonald is a pleasure to deal with, though I'll not take delivery until around next spring, and can't firsthand say anything of his work. His family sure plays 'em nice though.
Simon Chadwick swears by Davy Patton, and American luthier David Kortier makes student instruments for the Historical Harp Society of Ireland. I've no experience with harps of either make. Here in the US, the two leading lights of the wire-strung harp, Ann Heymann and Patrick Ball both play instruments by Jay Witcher.... but if you know that name, you didn't need this little 101 anyhow. :)
So.. boil it all down?
For me, the choice is presently metal strung, and eventually a historic replica. But my interest is more in the broader bardic tradition than harping as a discrete pursuit. This instrument is a very important, treasured part of that tradition.. but it is only a part.
Your own journey will mean your own choices. I do hope though that this has helped.
Part I: The modern Celtic harping tradition.
Part II: Playing differences, nylon and wire.
Part III: Choosing a Celtic harp.
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* If you do go nylon, you'll probably want sharping levers at least on your C and F strings - a good deal of what we know now as "Celtic Music" is derived from 18th c. or so fiddle tunes, and so often is in G or D major (both easy keys on the fiddle). You may also want to add levers to the B strings as well - I've seen quite a few harpers keep their B strings tuned flat, then brought back to natural with the levers so as to be able to easily drop down into F. How many more levers past that is a question for your wallet and your need for variety.
**As an aside, it's much easier to see what you're doing on a nylon-strung folk harp. The strings are color-coded - Cs are red, Fs are blue - so it's easy to see where you need to drop your fingers for those chords. Now, you can use a paint pen on the strings of a wire-strung harp - that's a neat trick Patrick Ball was kind enough to show us groupies after his show last year when we mobbed him for questions. However, nylon strings are both thicker and somewhat translucent, so they're much easier to see in dim light. Oh... and the paint wears off in short order.
** Though I doubt now I will. If I find myself aching in the future for a softer sound to replace my old Brittany, now sold off, I would probably choose a hand-made Gothic pattern bray harp. Though that's somewhat beyond the scope of this little posting.
*** I'd really recommend a look around James' site to get a feel for where he's coming from. His work is not historically precise, nor is it intended to be. This is a limitation if you're trying to recapture the original canon, as reconstructed by Heymann, Chadwick, and others.
If that's less important to you than a magical voice of bronze and wood filling the embracing night... it's no limitation at all. His harps are what they are, and are truly excellent instruments. (And as an aside, only a handful of instruments survived time and the English, so it's entirely possible some of his ideas were tried once upon a time and we'd never know).
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