Introduction to the Bowed Lyres.
The bowed lyres are an ancient family of instruments, which were once widespread all across Europe, but survived into recent times in Europe's cultural fringes, the Baltic, the Scottish Islands and Wales.
There has been much scholarly speculation on their origin. The commonly accepted theory nowadays is that Russ Vikings trading with the Arabs before the year 1000 brought the concept of the musical bow back from its stronghold in the Near East to the the Nordic countries where it was used to play the six stringed lyre, effectively as a new type of plectrum. It is awkward to play an instrument with six strings and a flat bridge with a bow so the number of strings was reduced . This modified lyre is the ancestor of the diverse bowed lyres known today.
In the early years of the last millenium some lyres were being made with fingerboards, one branch losing its side supports for the yoke and becoming the plucked Gittern, Cittern etc, the other keeping a more lyre like outline, and being played with a bow. The last member of this latter group survives into modern times in the form of the Crwth. The other Baltic bowed lyres have remained without a fingerboard.
The Baltic Bowed Lyres
These instruments divide into two types, the Finnish Jouhikko and the Estonian Talharpa (also known as Tagelharpa, Rootsi Kannel and Hiuu Kannel).
The Talharpa was originally played by Swedish speaking settlers, who colonised islands off the coast of Estonia in early medieval times. Its names have several derivations, Tagellharpa~Tail-Hair Harp, Talharpa~Tail-Harp or possibly Pine-Harp both being of Swedish language origin, Rootsi and Hiiu Kannel both mean Swedish-Kannel, (the Kannel being the stringed instrument of the Estonians) in Estonian. A typical Talharpa has four horsehair strings, a very rectangular outline including a square or nearly square hand hole. The Talharpa also has some violin like characteristics which presumably have been copied from rebecs or violins, including a trapezoidal tailpiece, end button and paired S, C or F holes either side of the bridge.
The Jouhikko is the name given to a distinctively Finnish type of bowed lyre, though it resembles in some ways types of Baltic Psaltery from further east such as the Slav Gusli, and types of psaltery/lyre hybrids found in the archaeological record from Novgorod, Opole etc. It may be descended from these instruments rather than from the Round Lyre, strictly speaking this would make it a bowed psaltery rather than a bowed lyre, but whether a psaltery with a hand hole should be re-categorised as a lyre is a matter for musicologists...
The typical Jouhikko has a long, narrow outline, with only a small hand hole which is offset to one side, allowing only one of the three strings to be stopped. It also has a rod like string holder, resembling that of a Kantele or Gusli, which is held by a string that passes through holes in the long 'tail-board' of the instrument, rather than around a small button set into the end as in the Talharpa. Sound holes tend to be round, keyhole shaped or cross shaped. The Jouhikko is a very variable instrument however, and examples with two hand holes, two strings, violin like tail-pieces or F/C holes are known. Some instruments even have a birds head like protrusion in the top in the manner of a Kantele.
The Strakharpa literally 'Bowed Lyre' in Swedish is a name first given to this family of instruments by the musicologist Otto Anderson. I mention it here to avoid confusion, the Strakharpa isn't an instrument in itself, but is commonly used as a catch all term, especially in Sweden and Norway.
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The Scottish Bowed Lyres
The Shetland Gue. It seems that the bowed lyre spread from Scandinavia with Viking colonists, and was taken to the Scottish Islands, many of which were until comparitively recently culturally much more Nordic than Celtic. The bowed lyre survived longest on Shetland, where it was known as late as the 1800s as the Gue. Eventually it was rendered obsolete by the fiddle, and fell out of use. No physical examples survive but written accounts describe it as being played upright between the knees (in the manner of the Baltic Lyres), as having two horse-hair strings, and as being played for weddings and other celebrations.
Certain aspects of Shetland fiddle style, such as the use of open tunings, double stopping on the string above as well as below the melody string, and shuffle bowing, may derive from the Gue. It is not known whether this instrument had a fingerboard, but none of the few bowed lyres from Norway or elsewhere in Scandinavia have fingerboards, and as the Shetlands were heavily influenced by Norwegian culture and instrument design it is likely that it also lacked one. I have endeavoured to recreate a two stinged bowed lyre, inspired by Norwegian examples, which may be used by musicians who wish to recreate this lost tradition.
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The Welsh Bowed Lyres
As mentioned earlier some lyres gained fingerboards, as well as a bow. In medieval times this style of bowed lyre was played all across Britain and in mainland Europe, where it was known as the Rotta, Rote, Chrotta, Chorus, Crowd and Crwth. The English surname Crowther and Scots surname MacWhirter both denoted players of this instrument. Initially the Crwth had three strings which all passed over the fingerboard, and an hourglass shape. Later around 1500 it acquired 2 doubled courses of melody strings, and a pair of drone strings which pass to one side of the fingerboard, and can either be played with the bow or plucked with the thumb, and the body became much more square. One interesting feature of Crwth design is the bridge, one foot of which rests on the soundboard in conventional style, while the other foot passes through a hole in the soundboard and rests on the back, acting therefore something like a sound post.
These remain the two distinctive forms of the instrument. The Crwth was finally rendered obsolete by the fiddle, and by changes in musical fashion which moved away from modal drone based music to a chromatic music with a wide compass which simply couldn't be played on the Crwth. The Welsh tradition lasted longest, but finally came to an end in the 1850s.
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Notes for Re-enactors
There are eleventh century representations of bowed lyres, both with and without fingrboards, from across Europe, though it was probably around for 100 years before this. The instrument endured, evolving into its present forms, until the present. Types of lyre with fingerboards are accurate for the mid eleventh century onwards across southern and Western Europe, whilst fingerboardless versions are appropriate for those re-enacting Northern European races, or South and West Europe until around 1200.