BYRNE'S TUNING
John Bell was a Scot who spent some time in Ireland. He owned a reproduction of the Downhill
harp and he probably played the instrument, as he recorded the following traditional method of
tuning the harp in 1849 from Pádraig Ó Beirn (Patrick O' Byrne) who had returned from his
sojourn in Edinburgh about two and a half years before.
"G on the Violin,
Now tune the 5th to G which is D,
then you tune the octave below to that D,
then you tune the 5th to the low D, which is A,
then you tune the fifth above A which is E,
then tune the octave to that E below,
then you tune the 5th to E above which is B natural,
then you tune the 5th to B natural which is F Sharp,
then you tune the octave to F Sharp below,
then you sound the G on the Violin and B and D,
and the octave above which is G which makes a common chord,
then you tune all the instrument up and down by octaves.
The open on the bass string on the Violin is one of the Sisters on the harp. The next
string below on the harp and it were tuned in unison, for which reason they were called
the sisters. These two unison notes are sometimes called and in ancient times were
called Ne Cawlee - or the companions, afterwards they were called the Sisters. The
Harp is tuned by the Sister note, so the open on the bass on the fiddle is the note by
which the harp is tuned. The Harp is then tuned in 3rds, 5th, 4th and octaves on the
principle of the pianoforte, so when you get seven strings tuned the rest are tuned in
octaves."
The 4th which Byrne refers to would tune up C, a string which he does not mention, and F
natural, as in the systems noted and published by Bunting.
However, the reference to "3rds, 5th, 4th and octaves" in Bell's account would most obviously
refer to the intervals out of which triads are made within the octave.
G - b (a third) b - d (a third) G - d (a fifth)
b - d (a third) d - g (a fourth) g - bb (a third)
d - g (a fourth) g - bb (a third) bb - dd (a third)
Under such an interpretation, the reference would not contradict the earlier part of the account
which tunes the harp primarily in fifths.
Byrne equates with violin G with the higher of the two sisters. In the systems Bunting and
Patrick O' Byrne give for the traditional tuning of the Gaelic harp, the seven strings not tuned
by octaves are those from f-G. These may be the strings referred to by Bunting as 'the
leading strings' and that is what I will call them in these articles for want of another term.