Arnold Bax, English by birth, found, through the poetry of Yeats, a latent affinity with things Irish. The Celtic element, in consequence, plays a large part in his work and thought. Bax imbibed all things Irish, wrote poetry and short stories under the pseudonym of ‘Dermot O’Byrne’, and learned Irish Gaelic. When in Dublin he moved in literary and nationalist circles, and his friends included the poet and writer Padraic Colum, founder of the Irish Review, and Padraig Pearse, champion of the Irish language who was executed after the Easter Rising in 1916. There is no doubt that the Elegiac Trio, written immediately after this shocking event, celebrated a world that was lost, but in a sense the later works with harp – the harp being, perhaps, a symbol of Ireland – had this function too.