For a start, leaving aside what the Catholics did to the Celtic church,
the original "Irish Aristocracy" of Celtic origin, and it's associated
royal courts, had been killed off by, or intermarried with, the
Norman-French-via-England invaders (also Catholic; but most people west
of the Orthodox lands were, in those days). These Anglo-Normans invaders
were the patrons of mediaeval Irish harpers; and it was they who, though
nominal English subjects, were supplanted or killed off during the
rebellions against Tudor rule. The last remmnant of truly
celtic-culture aristocrats, and the courts of Norman barons and earls,
were mostly destroyed both by the Wars of the Earls in Tudor times, and
in the general economic move from "castle and court" to "manor house"
living. So the Catholic courts which "maintained harpers" were gone two
centuries before the harpers died out.
But not all of the great catholic Norman-Irish noble families were
removed; more than half of them, for various reasons, allied with the
English. Butlers, Desmonds, Ormonds, and various Fitz- and Geraldine
clans exist in the "upper crust" in Ireland to modern times. And they
and the people who supplanted some of them, (which included some English
Catholics, Lord Baltimore for example, though the majority were
Protestant) became, as elsewhere in Europe, a landed gentry with
aristocratic titles. But even if Protestant, the gentry were also
patrons of harpers. Look at the list of O'Carolan patrons, at least a
third of them recognisably Protestant, including his good friend and
champion, Dean Swift. Of the better known of O'Carolan's harper
contempraries, Cornelius Lyons was supported by the Earl of Antrim, a
Protestant, and David Murphy by Lord Mayo. In the time following
O'Carolan, the harper Jerome Duigenan (whose name is mainly preserved
because the curious story of his competition with a Welsh harper before
the British parliament) had Colonel Jones, protestant and a landowner in
Ireland, as a patron. Even as late as the harpers competing in Belfast
in 1792, the (Episcopal) Bishop of Derry was the patron of Charles
Fanning and supported Dennis Hempson in his last years; and Arthur
O'Neill, prior to his appointment to the harpers school after the 1792
competition, "played equally for the chief families of both English and
Irish descent", and had been living with a Protestant family for the
previous ten years (according to Bunting).
You should also consider that during the worst of times for Catholic
landowners, the period of the Penal Laws following the 1680's and 90's
wars, O'Carolan and others were able to find Catholic families to
support them. Wheras the decline in the number of harpers in the mid to
late eighteenth century (between, let us say, the death of O'Carolan and
the Belfast Harp gathering in 1792) coincided with the period where the
more onerous conditions of the Penal Laws were removed, and there was a
return, and indeed in some cases a restoral of confiscated lands, of
those Catholic landowners who had left Ireland following the Williamite
wars. In other words, harpers declined at a time of stability, and in
some cases incerasing prosperity, amongst Catholic landowners.
So, though there is no doubt that war and rebellion by some had
diminished the "Catholic aristocracy" there were a number left; and it
was not an issue of Catholic vs Protestant, but patronage for harpers
was available from both. Thus I tend to agree with the remarks of
Hempson, the last of the "old style" wire-and-nails harp players -
"there's none left who want to listen to the old style of music".
Changes in fashion and taste amongst patrons lost the tradition, not
opression. Of course it is easier to blame a wicked outsider, than admit
it might have been a flaw inside the culture that "should have"
supported the music you love. And to blame the more harmonically complex
music of those wicked Italians (presumably Catholic) will not do,
because Irish history requires that Protestants must be demonized and
Catholics be saintly martyrs. Not that I wish to be an apologist for the
English; but there are quite enough true wicked things that they did in
Ireland, so there is no need to introduce a new false story and claim
that it's history. Leave that style of history to Facists, and Balkan
politicians. And since I was born and brought up in the north of
Ireland, I am always very suspicious of any simplistic explanation which
has Catholic vs Protestant in it; because I know from experience the
kind of evil behaviour produced by the repeated application of that kind
of story.
And a final historical note - the first (flawed, but first) attempt to
note down the history and preserve the music of the Irish harpers, and
indeed the only attempt while some trained through the oral tradition
were still living, was the Belfast competition, and the interviews and
followup with the harpers afterwards. This was organised by the
Joy-McCracken families, and done by Bunting. So we owe the source of
much of our present Celtic harp knowledge to the patronage and work of
Presbyterians and Episcopalians, not "Catholic aristocracy" !
History is always too complex for simple explanations.
Peter Mac
peter_macaulay@DGC.ceo.dg.com