The wire strung clarsach exemplifies the harp tradition of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. Called clàrsach in Scottish Gaelic and cláirseach in Irish, it differs greatly from the nylon/gut-strung lever harp predominant in Ireland and Scotland today.

The harp's brass strings and substantial one-piece soundbox produce its distinctive voice. Traditional fingernail playing and selective damping shape the instrument's brilliant resonance.

A harp is generally defined as a stringed musical instrument, having the strings perpendicular to the soundboard. This separates harps from members of the zither family, whose strings run across the soundboard, connected to it by a bridge (e.g. piano, lyre, psaltery). By the eleventh century a distinctive type of triangular frame harp had developed in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. Various names are and have been used for it including Irish harp, cruit, cláirseach or clàrsach, and wire-strung harp.

The wire strung harp was played in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands from at least a thousand years ago. It was an important part of the Gaelic aristocratic culture, and the players were socially privileged. A harper would be an esteemed member of his lord's household, and would provide his patron with music for both private and ceremonial occasions.

In the late sixteenth and seventeeth centuries harsh political realities triggered the tradition's decline and the harpers were forced to adapt to a new social order. As their patrons' fortunes reduced, the role of the harpers changed and their social standing was reduced. The harper was by now an itinerant musician with a number of patrons and would travel a large circuit, stopping at whatever houses would offer a welcome. The famous Irish composer Turlough O'Carolan (1670-1738) was such a travelling harper.

However, even this could not last as the Gaelic culture continued to decline and in the first half of the nineteenth century over one thousand years of accumulated artistic excellence faded into silence.

From the earliest times the wire strung harp was closely connected to Gaelic poetry. Formal, intricately structured poems were composed by the file (poet), and were recited or sung by the reacaire (reciter) accompanied by the cruitire (harper). Although poems from this early period survive in medieval manuscript books, there is little evidence of the music with which the poem would be delivered. Clues can come from different but parallel musical traditions, such as the ceòl mòr of the Scottish bagpipe, or the Welsh harp music of Robert ap Huw.

As the social order changed in the seventeenth century the old Gaelic arts were seen as old-fashioned and uninteresting, and the major Highland families could no longer afford to maintain a poet, reciter and harper. Instead the harpers took on all three roles, becoming itinerant singer-songwriters composing songs and tunes in honour of a number of patrons. To remain in demand their music borrowed from the latest fashions and the harpers incorporated new musical ideas from Europe into their playing

This was to be their undoing however, as the wire strung harp had never been a chromatic instrument and attempts to develop it in this direction in the seventeenth century met with no lasting success. Instead keyboard instruments gained the upper hand in the drawing rooms of Scotland and Ireland.

In the 1970s a significant revival began when a handful of scholars and musicians began studying the historical sources, most notably the writings of Edward Bunting, who had copied down tunes and techniques from some of the last of the old harpers in the late 18th and early 19th century.

At about the same time, a few instrument makers began to inspect the historical instruments which survive in museums and private collections in Scotland and Ireland, with a view to building accurate replicas of them. Suddenly wire strung harps were once again available to those who wanted to rediscover the tradition.

Today, with harps, CDs and music books for sale and lessons available, their success is self-evident and interest continues to grow.