# The Trinity College Harp > Unknown maker, Gaelic harp-making tradition - c. 1350-1500 (14th-15th century) > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-gaelic-harp-maker/trinity-college-harp/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-23 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown maker, Gaelic harp-making tradition - **Date:** c. 1350-1500 (14th-15th century) - **Medium:** Carved willow soundbox, forepillar and neck; brass tuning pins and wire strings - **Dimensions:** H. 85 cm (33.5 in) in its current reconstructed form; soundbox max. width c. 32 cm (12.5 in); longest string c. 62 cm - **Object type:** Musical instrument - **Period:** Gaelic Ireland/Scotland, 14th-15th century - **Current location:** Long Room, Old Library, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland - **Attribution:** unknown ## Summary A small, low-headed wire-strung Gaelic harp of the 14th or 15th century, carved from willow, one of only three surviving medieval instruments of its kind anywhere and the model, three or four hundred years after the fact, for the Irish state's official harp emblem and for the Guinness trademark. It has stood at Trinity College Dublin since 1782 and is popularly, but wrongly, known as Brian Boru's harp: a legend published in 1786 and dismissed as 'a clumsy forgery' by the antiquarian George Petrie as early as 1840.Its documented ownership history does not reach back nearly as far as its fame suggests. The chain that is genuinely traceable begins only in the 18th century, with the MacMahon family of County Clare; everything reported before that, including the popular Clanricarde and Henry VIII story, rests on the same family of antiquarian sources that produced the discredited Boru legend. A separate piece of physical evidence, a now-lost heraldic badge suggesting O'Neill ownership, points toward Ulster and has never been reconciled with the Clare and Connacht chain reported elsewhere. The harp has also been substantially rebuilt at least twice, most recently in 1961, in ways current researchers are still questioning for accuracy.None of that has stopped its outline from becoming one of the most reproduced images to come out of Ireland: adopted by Guinness in 1862 and trademarked in 1876, then adopted independently by the Irish Free State in 1923 as the model for its Great Seal, coinage, presidential and government seals, and passport, in a design specifically based on this instrument rather than on the older, generic harp motif that had circulated in Irish heraldry for centuries before either version existed. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1350-1500** Unknown maker and first owner(s) `[unknown]` (manufacture) Made somewhere in the Gaelic-speaking world of Ireland or the Scottish Highlands and Islands, on the evidence of comparative stylistic dating against the Queen Mary and Lamont harps. No maker, patron or first owner is documented. The widely repeated attribution to Brian Boru (d. 1014) is chronologically impossible and rejected by every scholarly source consulted. - **undated** Legendary chain: Donnchad son of Brian Boru, then the papacy, then Henry VIII `[disputed]` (legend, not a documented transfer) First published in 1786 by Charles Vallancey on information from Chevalier Thomas O'Gorman. Dismissed by George Petrie in 1840 as 'a clumsy forgery.' Eugene O'Curry in 1873 suggested the legend may have arisen from a genuine but garbled association with Donnchadh Cairbreach O'Brien (d. 1242), a real descendant of Brian Boru, rather than being invented from nothing. Recorded here as the origin of the harp's popular name, not as a real ownership event. - **1543-early 18th century** Ulick de Burgh, 1st Earl of Clanricarde, and his descendants `[disputed]` (gift, then inheritance) Reported in 19th-century antiquarian sources as a gift from Henry VIII on 1 July 1543, the day de Burgh was created Earl of Clanricarde. No primary Tudor-era record of this gift was located for this record; it appears only within the same family of antiquarian retellings that produced the discredited Brian Boru legend, and is graded disputed rather than documented on that basis, even though it is the point at which most popular summaries of the harp's history begin. - **early 18th century-c. 1756** MacMahon family of Clenagh, Co. Clare `[disputed]` (gift, from a lady of the de Burgh family) Reported consistently across secondary antiquarian sources, but no primary documentation of the transfer itself was located. - **c. 1756-1770s or 1781** Commissioner (Counsellor) MacNamara of Limerick `[documented]` (inheritance/bequest on MacMahon's death) Reported independently by multiple secondary sources with a consistent date of approximately 1756. By this point the harp had already lost its silver strings and some of its plate ornament, reportedly to theft or careless handling by servants. - **1770s-1781** Ralph Ousley of Limerick (disputed intermediate step) `[disputed]` (possible intermediate transfer) Reported only by the Early Gaelic Harp Info project; not corroborated by History Ireland's account or by the 1832 Dublin Penny Journal article, both of which go directly from MacNamara to Thomas O'Gorman. Included here as a genuine, unresolved discrepancy between sources rather than silently dropped. - **1781-1782** Chevalier Thomas O'Gorman, then Colonel William Burton Conyngham `[documented]` (delivery and gift) O'Gorman delivered the harp to Conyngham, the leading Irish antiquarian collector of his generation and a founding treasurer of the Royal Irish Academy. O'Gorman is the same individual who supplied Vallancey with the Brian Boru legend published in 1786. - **1782-present** Trinity College Dublin `[documented]` (donation and continuous institutional ownership) Conyngham deposited the harp at Trinity College Dublin in 1782, where it has remained on display, latterly in the Long Room of the Old Library, ever since. Its future physical location beyond the Old Library Redevelopment Project's currently stated closure date (end of 2027, per Trinity's own FAQ; an earlier press account gave December 2024) is not specified in any source consulted. ## Open questions - Where was the harp, and in whose hands, between its manufacture in the 14th or 15th century and its first independently reported owner, the MacMahon family of Clenagh in the 18th century? No source consulted names an owner across that three-hundred-year span. - Does the O'Neill heraldic badge once fixed to the forepillar establish real ownership by the O'Neill dynasty of Ulster, and if so, how does that fit with the separately reported Clanricarde and de Burgh chain running through Connacht and County Clare? No source consulted reconciles the two. - What became of the forepillar badge after it was last confirmed matched to the harp around 1881-1902? Its present location, and whether it survives at all, is unknown. - Was the Henry VIII-to-Clanricarde gift of 1543 itself a genuine, if now undocumented, transaction involving some older harp, or was it invented wholesale as part of the same legend-building that produced the Brian Boru story Petrie called a forgery in 1840? - Would direct radiocarbon or dendrochronological testing of the Trinity harp itself, which has apparently never been performed, narrow the 14th-to-16th-century range currently produced only by comparative stylistic dating? - What is the wood species of every structural component (forepillar and neck specifically, as distinct from the soundbox), given that comprehensive published identification exists for the harp's Scottish relatives but not, so far as located, for this instrument in full? - How faithful is the harp's current, 1961-reconstructed shape to its original medieval form, given that the same researcher who has studied the decoration most closely argues the 1961 British Museum reconstruction may have been influenced by an 1847 plaster cast that itself preceded, rather than recorded, the surviving object's actual 19th-century rebuild? - What is the true intermediate step, if any, between Commissioner MacNamara and Thomas O'Gorman: did Ralph Ousley of Limerick hold the harp in the 1770s, as one source states, or did it pass directly, as two other independent sources report? - What will happen to the harp physically when the Long Room closes for the Old Library Redevelopment Project? No source consulted, whether reporting a 2024 or a 2027 closure date, specifies where the harp will go or how it will be cared for during the works. ## Sources - [1] Wikipedia, 'Trinity College harp'. Tertiary source consolidating dating estimates, the Brian Boru legend, the 1961 reconstruction, and the Guinness/state-emblem history; flagged for replacement with the primary scholarly and museum citations it draws on. - [2] History Ireland, 'The Brian Boru harp'. - [3] Simon Chadwick, Early Gaelic Harp Info, 'the Trinity College harp' (overview page). - [4] Simon Chadwick, Early Gaelic Harp Info, 'the Trinity College harp: dating'. - [5] Simon Chadwick, Early Gaelic Harp Info, 'the Trinity College harp: damage'. - [6] Simon Chadwick, Early Gaelic Harp Info, 'the Trinity College harp: badge'. - [7] Simon Chadwick, Early Gaelic Harp Info, 'the Trinity College harp: decoration'. - [8] Simon Chadwick, 'Restoration of the Brian Boru harp', blog post, 1 November 2015. - [9] Simon Chadwick, 'Trinity College harp stringing and tuning', blog post, March 2016. - [10] Early Gaelic Harp Info, 'the O'Neill harp'. - [11] Early Gaelic Harp Info, 'the Kildare harp'. - [12] Library Ireland, 'Brian Boroihme's Harp', reprinting an article from the Dublin Penny Journal, 1832. - [13] Wirestrungharp.com, 'Trinity College Harp' (technical measurement table). - [14] Wirestrungharp.com, 'Guinness Fact Sheet: Downhill Harp'. - [15] Guinness Storehouse, 'Learn the History of the Guinness Harp'. - [16] The Irish Times, 'Tuning the harp to suit a changing Ireland'. - [17] The Art Newspaper, 'Trinity College Dublin turns a page on Old Library conservation', 1 February 2024. - [18] Trinity College Dublin, Old Library Redevelopment Project, FAQ page. - [19] Trinity College Dublin, News & Events, 'Trinity College Dublin in conjunction with the National Museum of Ireland Celebrate Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf'. - [20] Dictionary of Irish Biography, 'Conyngham, William Burton'. - [21] Karen Loomis, 'Research' (wood identification methodology and publication list for early Irish and Scottish harps). - [22] Wikimedia Commons, file description page for the lead image, licence verified directly. - [23] Wikimedia Commons, file description page for the historic Lawrence Collection photograph, licence and attribution verified directly. - [24] Simon Chadwick, Early Gaelic Harp Info, 'the Trinity College harp: replicas'. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. 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