Are there any Irish folktales involving the harp and its magical properties?
Habinski: The Dagda, one of the old Irish gods, is often depicted with a harp. Irish bards were supposed to be able to play three different types of tunes with magical properties on the harp – tunes that would move their listeners to tears, laughter, or sleep. The harp figures prominently in the myth of Oisin who is the last hero of the Golden Age of Ireland. He played the harp so beautifully that Niamh, one of the fairies or one of the Sidhe, steals him away and takes him to the land of the fairies. Yeats, hundreds of years later, wrote a beautiful epic poem called ‘The Wanderings of Oisin’. AIM: So they live happily ever after? Habinski: No, it doesn’t work out quite that well, unfortunately. Eventually he longs for home. She doesn’t want him to leave but says, ‘alright, if you want to see your family one last time, you may.’ She gives him a horse and tells him to stay on the horse and never set foot on Irish soil. He goes back to Ireland and finds that a hundred years have passed. I
