Editing Harp (section)

=== Folk, lever, and Celtic instruments ===
{{Main|Celtic harp}}
[[File:Celtic harps.JPG|thumb|upright|[[New Salem (Menard County), Illinois|New Salem Village]] [[Historical reenactment|re-enactor]] playing a [[Celtic harp]]]]
[[File:Celtic harp dsc05425.jpg|thumb|left|The medieval "[[Queen Mary Harp]]" (''Clàrsach na Banrìgh Màiri'') preserved in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. It is one of three surviving Insular Celtic medieval harps, which serve as protypes for "celtic harps".]]
In the modern era, there is a family of mid-size harps, generally with nylon strings, and optionally with partial or full levers but without pedals. They range from two to six octaves, and are plucked with the fingers, largely using the same techniques used for playing orchestral harps. Though these harps evoke ties to historical European harps, their specifics are modern, and they are frequently referred to broadly as "''Celtic harps''" due to their region of revival and popular association, or more generically as "''folk harps''" due to their use in non-classical music, or as "''lever harps''" to contrast their modifying mechanism with the larger pedal harp.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bouchaud |first=Dominig |title=Is "Celtic" a myth? The lever harp in Brittany |url=http://www.harpblog.info/en/2016/01/is-celtic-a-myth-the-lever-harp-in-brittany/ |journal=Harp Blog}}</ref>

[[File:Eisteddfod Caerwys - harpists (4153297586).jpg|thumb|upright|Welsh harpists at Caerwys [[Eisteddfod]] {{circa|1892}}]]
The modern Celtic harp began to appear in the early 19th&nbsp;century in Ireland, shortly after all the last generation of harpers had all died-out, breaking the continuity of musical training between the earlier native Gaelic harping tradition and the revival of Celtic harp playing as part of the later [[Celtic revival]].

[[John Egan (harp maker)|John Egan]], a pedal harp maker in Dublin, developed a new type of harp which had gut strings and semitone mechanisms like a reduced version of a single-action pedal harp; it was small and curved like the historical ''cláirseach'' or Irish harp, but its strings were of gut and the soundbox was much lighter.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rimmer |first=Joan |date=1977 |title=The Irish Harp |publisher=Mercier Press for the Cultural Relations Committee  |page=67 |url= }}</ref> In the 1890s a similar new harp was also developed in Scotland as part of the [[Celtic revival|popular revival of Gaelic culture]].<ref>Collinson, Francis (1983)[1966]. ''The Bagpipe, Fiddle and Harp''. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966; reprinted by Lang Syne Publishers Ltd., {{ISBN|0946264481}}, {{ISBN|978-0946264483}}</ref> In the mid-20th&nbsp;century [[Jord Cochevelou]] developed a variant of the modern Celtic harp which he referred to as the "Breton Celtic harp"; his son [[Alan Stivell]] was to become the most influential Breton harper, and a strong influence in the broader world of the Celtic harp.