harpers would play after me. Belfast Harp Society The impetus behind the festival survived the 1798 insurrection the United Irishmen (under the banner of the harp without the crown) and the 1800 Acts of Union which abolished the Kingdom of Ireland with its parliament in Dublin. In 1808, those involved in organising the festival in 1792, including James MacDonnell and Edward Bunting organised the first of the Belfast Harp societies. Employing Arthur O’Neill as the principal tutor, they sought to train a new generation of Irish harpists from among poor children, chosen, in the patriotic tradition of 1792, without reference to religious distinction. With the assistance and contributions of Mary Ann McCracken, Bunting published a second volume of his work The Ancient Music of Ireland in 1809. The Linen Hall Harp Festival of 1903 In 1903, a week-long harpers' festival, originally intended by the members of the Linen Hall Library for the centenary of the 1792 festival, was held in Belfast. Such large crowds attended that, after the first night, the concert was moved from the library's new premises to one of the city's larger halls. The first Ulster branch of the Gaelic League had been formed in 1895 in east Belfast under the active patronage (until he left to become Church of Ireland Lord Bishop of Ossory) of the Rev. John Baptiste Crozier and the presidency of his parishioner, Dr. John St Clair Boyd, both unionists. It marked a renewal of interest in Irish studies among the educated middle class that briefly straddled the city's sectarian divide. In 2022 a group called Reclaim the Enlightenment based in Belfast joined with a number of other groups to bring a 230th Anniversary Festival. References Music festivals in Northern Ireland 1792 in Ireland Festivals in Belfast