The Harp of New Albion - A True Story.

In 1577 Francis Drake set out from England with five ships, one of which was the Pelican but which Drake unexpectedly renamed the Golden Hind in a small ceremony upon its rolling deck not far out into the already busy shipping lanes of the English Channel (which was currently French). Drake’s aim was to discover new things and plunder new peoples. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean, lost a couple of the ships and became embroiled in contretemps with Brazilians.

‘South!’ Drake exclaimed, so they did.

By mid 1579 Drake had made it around Cape Horn and up the Pacific west coast of South America all the way to Southern California. As usual it was godless and full of taupe-tinged heathens. He stood harbour side unsteadily regarding the small settlement he’d decided to Christen Nova Albion - these days better known as San Francisco Bay - a smeary telescope in one hand, harp in the other. Behind him, his ship groaned with twenty-five tons of stolen silver. It was a windy day and the stiff breeze played havoc with Drake’s elaborate whiskers. He put the harp down and with scurvy-ridden digits tugged and twisted them back into some sort of slippery waxen shape. He was also drunk; he usually was; his crew were too, it had been a long year.

‘What are you going to do with that harp, Cap’n?’ asked the bosun, Drake’s drinking buddy and occasional confidant.

‘I’m going to damn well play it,’ slurred Drake. ‘As a greeting, for the natives.’

‘But you can’t play it, sir. Holbrook could play it, but you shot him in Buenos Aires.’

‘I wondered what had happened to Holbrook. Why did I shoot him, do you know?’

‘No idea, sir. You were very merry.’

‘I was?’

‘Indeed at your absolute merriest.’

Drake frowned, raised a dirty-shirted arm and flopped onto the pier’s warped boards, staring out into the angular water of the harbour. He toyed with the harp, dismally.

‘I sometimes wonder what we’re doing here at all.’

The bosun didn’t reply. Drake turned to him. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Not really, no. I have faith in you, cap’n, sir. Wherever you may lead and all.’

‘Faith! Ha!’

‘What’s funny about that, sir?’

‘Faith!’

Drake bashed his telescope on the ground and it made a small tinkling sound.

‘Now I’ve broken my telescope!’

Late that same year, Chief Running Horse stood atop the cliffs overlooking Nova Albion Bay watching the Golden Hind bob back out to sea. Over the five weeks he’d hung around, Drake had executed two previous chiefs, so Running Horse was delighted to see the Englishmen depart before he could become the third. In his right hand he held Drake’s broken telescope; in his left the abandoned harp. He set the harp down on the long grass and held the telescope up to an eye, directing it into the clouds above. Through the broken glass the sky appeared prismatic and unreal like old peyote dreams. He shook the telescope and took another look; the shapes had changed again; the telescope had become a kaleidoscope.

As Chief Running Horse gazed yet further into the spliced-out clouds, the wind on the clifftop rose and whistled through the strings of the old harp beside him. Running Horse stood listening to the machine in wonder. As the wind rose, so the harp hummed on; as the air currents shifted, so too did the harp’s tonality. The chief flung himself agape down on the grass before it; soon all the other villagers came tentatively up the cliff and did the same. The singing harp never moved from this clifftop spot – it became an object of worship and the wind continued to play it even as its wood frame warped and it bent into gnarled rust twine in the shifting humidity of the Pacific ocean’s breath.

In 1986 American minimalist composer Terry Riley wrote a piece of music (for piano; not abandoned harp, sadly) based on this legend entitled ‘The Harp of New Albion’, and it comes to you highly recommended. And you may be pleased to hear that this is all I have to say.

By Seb Hunter.

Return To News Page