Belfast Harp Societies

Belfast Harp Society (1808), Irish Harp Society (1819).

Arthur O’Neill, Belfast Harp Society tutor

The Belfast Harp Society (1808-1813) and its successor, the Irish Harp Society (1819-1839), were philanthropic associations formed in the town of Belfast, Ireland, for the avowed purpose of sustaining the music and tradition of itinerant Irish harpists, and secondarily, of promoting the study of the Irish language, history, and antiquities. For its patronage, the original society drew upon a diminshing circle of men and women, Presbyterians for the most part, who were veterans of the patriotic, reform and—in the case of several unrepentant United Irishmen—revolutionary politics of the 1790s. In a town, hostile in its sectarian division to Protestant interest in distinctive Irish culture, the society reconvened as the Irish Harp Society in 1819 only as a result of a large and belated subscription raised from expatriates in India. Once that source was exhausted, the new society ceased its activity.

Belfast Harp Society

Subscribers

The list of the Society's original subscribers (191 names, representing a total annual subscription of 281 guineas) was headed town's proprietor, the Marquess of Donegall at 20 guineas. But the principal movers were Dr James MacDonnell and his brother Alexander (the Presbyterian sons of Michael Roe, a Catholic relation of the earls of Antrim) who stood apart, though not publicly in opposition, to the Donegalls' Anglican establishment. They were well connected to those who, in the cause of representative government, had taken the test or pledge of the Society of United Irishmen (for whom the Irish harp was the symbol) to forward “a brotherhood of affection .. among Irishmen of every religious persuasion". Thus the list of subscribers included the author of the original test, Dr. William Drennan; Francis, John, and Mary Ann, McCracken, brothers and sister to Henry Joy McCracken who had been hanged as a rebel in "'98"; Drennan's early associate, Thomas McCabe; and William Tennent, who had been held as a state prisoner until 1802. Also among the subscribers was William Tennent's brother, Dr Robert Tennent who with Drennan produced the Belfast Monthly Magazine committed to Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform.

Music and language

An original inspiration for the Society was the harpist Arthur O'Neill who had instructed James and Alexander MacDonnell in their youth. Through the society, they were able to provide their old teacher with a sinecure as a charitable tutor to poor children (from the age of ten) blind like himself. The musical director was the musician and collector Edward (Atty) Bunting. Bunting had for thirty years been a lodger of the McCrackens, and Mary Ann McCracken acted as his unofficial secretary (contributing anonymously to the second volume of his work The Ancient Music of Ireland in 1809). In July 1792, with the support of the McCrackens, Bunting had brought O'Neill to Belfast's first Harp Festival. This had been staged for the benefit of the Belfast Charitable Society but coincided with the town's Bastille Day celebrations, complete with parades by local Volunteer corps, and resolutions in favour of Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform.

The Society provided not only for the teaching and preservation of Irish music but also,from July 1809, classes in the Irish language. Provided by James Cody, these were welcomed by Mary Ann McCracken, who is known to have studied from Charles Vallency's Irish grammar, and by her Gaeilgeoir friends, and fellow subscribers, the poetess Mary Balfour and the brothers Samuel and Andrew Bryson. Dr MacDonnell, Robert James Tennent (the son of Robert Tennent), and the engineer Alexander Mitchell contributed to an additional subscription to support Cody's efforts.

Crisis and demise

From 1810, money was raised for the Society by a winter season of six balls held in the Exchange Rooms under the patronage of the Marchioness of Donegall.

In 1818, Whitelaw and Walsh, in their History of Dublin, observed that “several blind minstrels educated in the seminary at Belfast are found wandering through different parts of the country, affording a pleasing and harmless amusement to the people who hear them, providing a comfortable support for their necessities, and a sweet consolation to their infirmities”. But by then, the Society had already ceased operation.

The Irish antiquary, George Petrie, argued that the society had been flawed in conception:

The effort of the people of the North to perpetuate the existence of the harp in Ireland by trying to give a harper’s skill to a number of poor blind boys was at once a benevolent and a patriotic one; but it was a delusion. The harp at the time was virtually dead, and such effort could give it for a while only a sort of galvanised vitality. The selection of blind boys, without any greater regard for their musical capacities than the possession of the organ of hearing, for a calling which doomed them to a wandering life, depending for existence mainly if not wholly on the sympathies of the poorer classes, and necessarily conducive to intemperate habits, was not a well-considered benevolence, and should never have had any fair hope of success.

Others attributed the break up of the society in 1812–13, to its treatment of Arthur O'Neill. It is alleged that O'Neill, considered "something of a national treasure", was not adequately paid, so that he lived his last years in poverty, and that the resulting scandal induced people who had championed the work of the society to withdraw their support.

Irish Harp Society

The Bengal Subscription

Letters and poems submitted to the major Belfast papers urging that something be done to help O'Neill found to their way to expatriate community in India. Readers both Irish and Indian, on O'Neill's behalf, raised £1,200. But as O'Neill was three years dead by the time this bounty reached Belfast, it was put instead to creating a new Irish Harp Society for which James MacDonnell and William Tennent were, once more, active patrons. A small number of harps was procured, and the pupils were again selected, "without reference to religious distinctions", from "the blind and the helpless". In 1823, the new master was Valentine Rennie of Cushendall. He had who been committed to O'Neill as pupil by James MacDonnell, and on the occasion of his visit to Ireland in 1821 had performed for King George IV.

The Belfast News Letter, 15 April 1828, published extracts of a glowing tribute to the Society's academy, and of "the inimitable Rainey", that appeared in the Calcutta newspaper The Bengal Hurkaru and Chronicle

We can confidently assure the friends and benevolent supporters of the patriotic and humane establishment, that the prosperity of the Institution has never for a moment been forgotten or unattended to. The contributors, by all accounts, have now the satisfaction of knowing, that they have effectually restored the ancient melodies, the nearly lost airs of the Emerald Isle, by the encouragement given by them to the long–neglected and forgotten Harper.

The News Letter conceded that the Society's friends in Ireland, were not able "to contend" with the generosity with which its patrons in India responded to such reports. While "our resident countryman", the Marquis of Downshire, "with his usual characteristic patriotism, in the encouragement of every thing useful and liberal" made an annual subscription of ten pounds, the India the list of subscribers was headed by the Governor General, the late Marquess of Hastings, at more than £31, and by a further eight of "our patriotic countrymen", each contributing more than £12.

Rennie died in 1837. The subscriptions from the India (to which "on liberal terms" Rennie had been invited) declined, and in 1839 the academy in Cromac Street closed. John McAdam, the Society's secretary, noted there was not sufficient local interest to sustain its activity:"Our gentry in Ireland are too scarce, and too little national, to encourage itinerant harpers, as of old; besides, the taste and fashion of music no longer bears upon our national instrument: it had its day but, like all other fashions, it must give way to novelty.".

Changing fashion

McAdam did also concede that, "like all other fashions," "the taste and fashion of music ... must give way to novelty.". From 1809 Irish harps were purchased by many titled women in Ireland. But after the year 1835, the "'fad' went out". Charles Egan's workshop in Dublin, the main supplier, went out of business. Irish harp was ousted in both country houses, and popular venues, by the pianoforte and violin.

In 1856, The Illustrated London News, reported that the "ancient national music of Ireland is kept alive by a few practitioners of a very humble kind, who wander about in their own country chielfy playing to parties assemble in taverns". The only "gentleman harper" remaining was Partick Byrne, of Farney, County Monaghan, who some years previously had had the honour of performing before the Queen Victoria at Balmoral. Byrne had graduated from the Irish Harp School in Belfast in 1821.

Belfast's waning "national" outlook

Events co-inciding with the demise of the first harp society in 1813, did suggest that in Belfast the necessary "national" outlook was waning. Robert Tennent, the Harp Society's treasurer, was sentenced to three months in prison for allegedly assaulting a prominent member of the local Tory establishment while attempting, at a town meeting, to protest killings by a relatively new element in the life of the town, the Orange order. When, following the Reform Act of 1832, the first opportunity arose of challenging the nominees of Lord Donegall in a parliamentary election it was taken up by Tennent's son, Robert James Tennent (a subscriber the Irish Harp Society). But failing to commit himself on an issue that increasingly was to associate interest in Irish culture with Catholic-majority separatism, repeal of the Act of Union, he lost.