The British Isles is split between England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.  Traditional music developed from ballads and folk songs which were performed by traveling minstrels.  In addition sea shanties and nursery rhymes were popular.  Given the wide variety of musical influences I have chosen the Celtic harp which influenced Scottish, Irish and Welsh traditional music.  By the year 1000 early forms of harp were widespread, and the earliest can be traced to Scotland in the eighth or ninth centuries.  Traditional harps were wire strung and plucked with long crooked fingernails.  The harp flourished for 600 years however became unpopular in the 16th Century.  Modern engineering techniques have made it possible to build small wire strung harps with a sweet sound and we have seen a resurgence of the harp.

Harp- Sizes vary from large pedal to small hand held.

Other instruments

Bagpipes- Scotland

Fiddle- England

I have listened to a piece of Welsh harp music called Dacw 'Nghariad and this piece of music made me smile and I wanted to sing along but the words are in Welsh.  The instrument is a Celtic harp with vocal accompaniment.

To listen to the music click here

18th Century March

Minuet from Orpheus

Ym Mhontypridd