Ireland is unique we’re the only country
in the world whose national emblem the
official coat of arms of our states is
just one single musical instrument a
harp
now many nations draw on different
symbols and different images in the
formation of their emblems because
symbols you see have power they have a
power to influence into shape and
nation’s conscience its structures and
even its value system but many nations
draw on images that are military or even
violent in a world that is becoming
increasingly polarized and unstable I
wonder is it time that we conduct a
global review of national emblems to
look afresh at the impact that they have
on our lives and if we were to conduct
such a review what a very helpful
starting point be Ireland’s own
experience with our heart you see the
harp has been immensely successful in
embedding itself into so many diverse
aspects of Irish cultural and civic life
I mean in Ireland it’s everywhere every
one of you right now is carrying a harp
you see it’s on your money and indeed it
has been a feature of our money for
nearly 500 years since King Henry the
eighth put a harp on the early Irish
coins it’s on our official state
identification indeed looking at my
driver’s license here the security
filter of a harp looks a little like the
Irish government’s equivalent of a
farmer’s cattle branding iron you know
this is proof that you’re Irish it’s
even on our drink not that drink this
drink so from sport to business to our
physical infrastructure the harp has
saturated an
surrounded through the generations Irish
cultural life but I believe that it’s
real power can be found in the fact that
it can be viewed as an immensely
powerful symbolic antidote to some of
the great challenges facing the world
today certainly the Western world so I
want to engage in a little bit of a
thought experiment I want to take this
symbolic power of the harp and contrast
it against some of the really pressing
social issues of today I’ve identified
three issues I call them my three eyes a
crisis of inclusion a crisis of
integration and a crisis of imagination
what do I mean well first a crisis of
inclusion when the Irish Free State was
first formed about 100 years ago one of
the first delegates to go and visit the
newly formed government of WT cosgrave
was the Church of Ireland Archbishop of
Dublin John Gregg he was sent as part of
an official delegation on behalf of
southern Protestants to ask the leaders
of the newly formed state should the
Protestants say stay or go
now if cosgrave had said go then me or
my family wouldn’t be here but actually
what Gregg asked raises a fascinating
existential question for all nations who
belongs here you see all nations are
diverse all nations require all their
citizens to play an active role and yet
all nations also require some form of a
subjective vision therefore there is an
inevitable tension latent within all
forms of nationalism the tension between
identity and inclusion and yet our
friend the heart
500 years ago developed an extraordinary
methodology of social inclusion
particularly addressing issues of
unemployment and disability you see
throughout the Middle Ages the hearth
was reserved almost exclusively for just
one section of Irish society blind men
it was like a form of social
compensation for those that would have
been born with a physical disability it
was social welfare but it was also
social contribution and it was an
integral part of Ireland’s historic
economy it was a normative locked-in
structure within ancient Ireland so the
harp provides us this extraordinary
symbol of inclusion are not just
personal inclusion but systems of
inclusion structures of inclusion a
model for every nation to consider to
today today secondly the crisis of
integration a recent pan-european survey
found alarming rises amongst European
citizens in negative attitudes towards
refugees migrants and an alarming
increase in Islamophobia indeed
elections European elections today are
often won or lost based on both the
political and the public responses to
these issues and so we must return to
the harp because it is of course this
beloved integrated symbol of Irishness
and yet it didn’t originate here we
don’t know exactly where the harp came
from but one of the strongest theories
is that it was brought here by the early
Christian monks who themselves were
inspired by a particular school called
the Egyptian desert fathers the egyptian
desert fathers used to play the harp as
they accompanied the singing of the Sam
the Sam’s in the Book of Psalms are
attributed to King David who himself was
a Harper but the harp didn’t originate
in the Bible our earliest historical
records suggests that in fact the harp
may have originated in the Royal Courts
of Sumer in modern-day Iraq some five
thousand five hundred years ago so again
the harp is this extraordinary model of
integration how it moved from secular
use to religious use from Judaism to
Christianity from the Middle East to
Ireland surely you can hardly find
anything as integrated or as interfaith
as the harp and finally the crisis of
imagination I work as a university
chaplain in Dublin and one of the
challenges I see facing graduate
students is the sharp opportunity and
salary gap between those graduating in
arts and humanities studies on one hand
and those graduating in science
technology engineering and mathematics
the STEM subjects on the other hand it
appears to me that the almost the whole
of the Irish economy indeed probably the
whole of the Western economy possibly
the whole of the Western civilization is
leaning more and more on just one
dimension of human insight and less and
less on the other and so the harp draws
us back to this question of imagination
on a very simple level any Disney movie
you hear the strumming of the harp and I
can symbolize a wish being granted or
the arrival of a fairy godmother it has
this ancient role within mythology and
folklore to symbolize the creative to
symbolize thinking differently to think
symbolize a sound of mystery
because of course so much of life can
sometimes be only understood as mystery
there are profound things in that we
experience in this life which we can
only understand as mysterious and this
lesson came home to me very strongly
over the summer when I visited an
uninhabited island of the West connemara
Coast in Galway in a Shakira Island and
as my boat arrived something most
extraordinary happened as we landed on
the beach because I had my stuff in the
boat and I reached over and took the
harp and when I place the harp from the
boat onto the sand something
[Music]
on its own without me doing anything it
just suddenly started to sing unadmitted
extraordinary melody I know the cynics
would just say you know that’s just the
the west connemara wind but it was much
because we had this kind of undulating
melody that somehow was it was in
harmony with the goals that were
circling above but also it was in rhythm
with the ripples of the waves that come
in the beach it was like some kind of
symphony of nature the harp was at the
center I was you might think I’m crazy
but do you know one of the most famous
harp songs ever written is said to have
occurred in exactly the same way
Londonderry air or Danny Boy the story
goes in the 1600s the blind Harper
Rory doll or Cajon they came so drunk
that as he wandered along the river row
valley he fell down and his heart became
dislodged he managed to awaken slowly
from his drunken slumber only to hear
his harp playing a song all on its own
but it was no ordinary song it was the
most beautiful melody he had ever heard
so he learnt it as quickly as he could
composed himself and picked up the harp
and went to the patrons castle and
played Londonderry air you will notice
to this day no composer
is ever accredited with writing the
melody Ireland is unique a tower the
center of our national identity is a
profound symbol of inclusion a symbol of
integration a symbol of imagination
surely every knee needs its own harp thank you
in the world whose national emblem the
official coat of arms of our states is
just one single musical instrument a
harp
now many nations draw on different
symbols and different images in the
formation of their emblems because
symbols you see have power they have a
power to influence into shape and
nation’s conscience its structures and
even its value system but many nations
draw on images that are military or even
violent in a world that is becoming
increasingly polarized and unstable I
wonder is it time that we conduct a
global review of national emblems to
look afresh at the impact that they have
on our lives and if we were to conduct
such a review what a very helpful
starting point be Ireland’s own
experience with our heart you see the
harp has been immensely successful in
embedding itself into so many diverse
aspects of Irish cultural and civic life
I mean in Ireland it’s everywhere every
one of you right now is carrying a harp
you see it’s on your money and indeed it
has been a feature of our money for
nearly 500 years since King Henry the
eighth put a harp on the early Irish
coins it’s on our official state
identification indeed looking at my
driver’s license here the security
filter of a harp looks a little like the
Irish government’s equivalent of a
farmer’s cattle branding iron you know
this is proof that you’re Irish it’s
even on our drink not that drink this
drink so from sport to business to our
physical infrastructure the harp has
saturated an
surrounded through the generations Irish
cultural life but I believe that it’s
real power can be found in the fact that
it can be viewed as an immensely
powerful symbolic antidote to some of
the great challenges facing the world
today certainly the Western world so I
want to engage in a little bit of a
thought experiment I want to take this
symbolic power of the harp and contrast
it against some of the really pressing
social issues of today I’ve identified
three issues I call them my three eyes a
crisis of inclusion a crisis of
integration and a crisis of imagination
what do I mean well first a crisis of
inclusion when the Irish Free State was
first formed about 100 years ago one of
the first delegates to go and visit the
newly formed government of WT cosgrave
was the Church of Ireland Archbishop of
Dublin John Gregg he was sent as part of
an official delegation on behalf of
southern Protestants to ask the leaders
of the newly formed state should the
Protestants say stay or go
now if cosgrave had said go then me or
my family wouldn’t be here but actually
what Gregg asked raises a fascinating
existential question for all nations who
belongs here you see all nations are
diverse all nations require all their
citizens to play an active role and yet
all nations also require some form of a
subjective vision therefore there is an
inevitable tension latent within all
forms of nationalism the tension between
identity and inclusion and yet our
friend the heart
500 years ago developed an extraordinary
methodology of social inclusion
particularly addressing issues of
unemployment and disability you see
throughout the Middle Ages the hearth
was reserved almost exclusively for just
one section of Irish society blind men
it was like a form of social
compensation for those that would have
been born with a physical disability it
was social welfare but it was also
social contribution and it was an
integral part of Ireland’s historic
economy it was a normative locked-in
structure within ancient Ireland so the
harp provides us this extraordinary
symbol of inclusion are not just
personal inclusion but systems of
inclusion structures of inclusion a
model for every nation to consider to
today today secondly the crisis of
integration a recent pan-european survey
found alarming rises amongst European
citizens in negative attitudes towards
refugees migrants and an alarming
increase in Islamophobia indeed
elections European elections today are
often won or lost based on both the
political and the public responses to
these issues and so we must return to
the harp because it is of course this
beloved integrated symbol of Irishness
and yet it didn’t originate here we
don’t know exactly where the harp came
from but one of the strongest theories
is that it was brought here by the early
Christian monks who themselves were
inspired by a particular school called
the Egyptian desert fathers the egyptian
desert fathers used to play the harp as
they accompanied the singing of the Sam
the Sam’s in the Book of Psalms are
attributed to King David who himself was
a Harper but the harp didn’t originate
in the Bible our earliest historical
records suggests that in fact the harp
may have originated in the Royal Courts
of Sumer in modern-day Iraq some five
thousand five hundred years ago so again
the harp is this extraordinary model of
integration how it moved from secular
use to religious use from Judaism to
Christianity from the Middle East to
Ireland surely you can hardly find
anything as integrated or as interfaith
as the harp and finally the crisis of
imagination I work as a university
chaplain in Dublin and one of the
challenges I see facing graduate
students is the sharp opportunity and
salary gap between those graduating in
arts and humanities studies on one hand
and those graduating in science
technology engineering and mathematics
the STEM subjects on the other hand it
appears to me that the almost the whole
of the Irish economy indeed probably the
whole of the Western economy possibly
the whole of the Western civilization is
leaning more and more on just one
dimension of human insight and less and
less on the other and so the harp draws
us back to this question of imagination
on a very simple level any Disney movie
you hear the strumming of the harp and I
can symbolize a wish being granted or
the arrival of a fairy godmother it has
this ancient role within mythology and
folklore to symbolize the creative to
symbolize thinking differently to think
symbolize a sound of mystery
because of course so much of life can
sometimes be only understood as mystery
there are profound things in that we
experience in this life which we can
only understand as mysterious and this
lesson came home to me very strongly
over the summer when I visited an
uninhabited island of the West connemara
Coast in Galway in a Shakira Island and
as my boat arrived something most
extraordinary happened as we landed on
the beach because I had my stuff in the
boat and I reached over and took the
harp and when I place the harp from the
boat onto the sand something
[Music]
on its own without me doing anything it
just suddenly started to sing unadmitted
extraordinary melody I know the cynics
would just say you know that’s just the
the west connemara wind but it was much
because we had this kind of undulating
melody that somehow was it was in
harmony with the goals that were
circling above but also it was in rhythm
with the ripples of the waves that come
in the beach it was like some kind of
symphony of nature the harp was at the
center I was you might think I’m crazy
but do you know one of the most famous
harp songs ever written is said to have
occurred in exactly the same way
Londonderry air or Danny Boy the story
goes in the 1600s the blind Harper
Rory doll or Cajon they came so drunk
that as he wandered along the river row
valley he fell down and his heart became
dislodged he managed to awaken slowly
from his drunken slumber only to hear
his harp playing a song all on its own
but it was no ordinary song it was the
most beautiful melody he had ever heard
so he learnt it as quickly as he could
composed himself and picked up the harp
and went to the patrons castle and
played Londonderry air you will notice
to this day no composer
is ever accredited with writing the
melody Ireland is unique a tower the
center of our national identity is a
profound symbol of inclusion a symbol of
integration a symbol of imagination
surely every knee needs its own harp thank you
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