Putting aside the question of WHY one would make a fiddle out of a girl's bones

[conuly]

Or a harp, or a guitar, or an accordian, or any other instrument, what I want to know is how. Is it even *possible* to make your fiddle out of a breastbone, from any sort of person? Now, I know of versions where the instrument of the dead girl is a flute, which makes some sense, but - would a string instrument out of a breastbone even work?

Of course, I'm assuming that it's a whole breastbone. If he chopped it up for some reason, would that make it better or worse?

And stringing your instrument with hair? The bow, maybe, but the instrument itself, strung with hair? Gruesome, and honestly, aren't most instrument strings nowadays metal? What were they before they were metal? Surely not actual hair?

On that note, I'm sure I know of a version of Cruel Sister which inserts a verse about the cruel sister running to tell her parents about her sister's tragic, um, "accident" prior to the dead sister being found dead, but now I can't find it for the life of me. It's possible I'm confusing myself with a prose rewrite that was my very first introduction to the story, but does anybody else have any ideas here?

Comments

[siderea]

I have heard it claimed (I think even in an academic context) that there is in fact a history (very ancient) of stringing harps with horse hair. But in all my work in early music, I've never seen or heard a hair-strung harp.

Today, there are conceptually two sorts of string for string instruments: gut and wire. Except that gut's wicked expensive, so we have the more affordable substitute, nylon.

Those to basic flavors come in variations, such as wrapped vs. not. Wire comes in a variety of metals: brass, bronze, and steel are the most common and important. Sometimes specific metals are considered intrinsic to the instrument, e.g. IIRC mandolins are strung exclusively in steel wire, and "steel strung guitar" is definitionally. There is also hybrid stuff like "wire-wrapped nylon".

ETA: I should mention, an instrument is built to handle one of either gut/nylon or metal, but the tensons on the body of the instrument are so different, one generally can't swap freely between them. Metal strings are MUCH higher tension, and as such instruments built to have them must be much stronger and usually thicker. Instruments built for gut or nylon are built very light, so they don't dampen the sound. A 4 course gut-strung lute is so light it feels like it is made of paper. Which, considering how thin the wood is, it pretty much is.

[janewilliams20]

I'd add to that that while I can't speak for other instruments, gut-strung and wire-strung harps have totally different playing techniques. Gut string (like mine), you pluck with the pads of your fingers. Wire-strung you pluck with the nails, and damp each note with the pads just after you play it - well, unless what you're after is the "heavenly cascade" effect rather than actual music.

[ysobel]

I think I always pictured the breastbone fiddle thing as being a more or less normal fiddle but with the breastbone as the fingering board (the black strip under the strings). Dunno though...

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Strings were made of gut. Cat-gut was the proverbial, but gut. Modern cheap replacement is nylon. Hair? I'm very unconvinced. As you say, the bow, yes, that's usually horsehair and human hair won't be much different.

I can see making a lyre, or harp, out of bone, you need long thin hollow things rather than big flat ones, though I'm not sure it would stand up to the stresses imposed by the strings, and the sound box probably wouldn't give much of a tone. I don't know enough about anatomy to know what shape a breastbone is, and how well it might work.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Violin strings were never made out of actual cat guts (http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/11/violin-strings-were-never-made-out-of-actual-cat-guts/), but they were made of gut before they were made of wire, and the best bows are still real horsehair.

The ancient Welsh really did string their harps with twisted horsehair, and doubtless sometimes with womens' hair too. Their harps were little lap-harps - here's an image (http://www.clera.org/saesneg/harp.php") - it might be possible to make one out of human ribs. In the story 'The Stolen Bairn And The Sidhe', AKA 'The Gold-Strung Harp', the mother who has to win her child back makes a harp of the bones of a 'great sea-beast' that she finds bleached white on the shore, and strings it with her own hair - that sounds plausible enough to me.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Hmmm - image link not working for some reason: http://www.clera.org/saesneg/harp.php

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

And check this one out: http://www.telynrawn.org/ - it's got a recording of a horsehair-strung harp. From the pictures, though, I think it would be very hard to build one like that entirely from one woman's body-parts.

One might also ask, "Why would anybody DO that, even if they could?", which seems a more pertinent question. But people in ballads are frequently barking mad, and this goes double for Bards, so... "ask how, never why".

[wednes.livejournal.com]

Gut strings (sheep, not cat) are still made these days, but most players find them prohibitively expensive, and far too temperamental in how they react to temperature and humidity. Typically, classical violinists will use strings with metal wound around a synthetic core of some kind. Fiddlers tend to use steel strings for their loud, jaunty sound. If the strings were wound with hair, you wouldn't be able to get any sound out of them with a horsehair bow.

I can't imagine that you could get any real resonance out of human bones, especially once they are dried out.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Considering a lot of instruments have bone parts in them (bone bridges, nuts, pegs, etc.) and bone inlay (often combined with ebony for lovely marquetry effects), I can see the old story being just a slight exaggeration. (My new dulcimer has a bone nut and bridge, and some people play with bone noters or picks, for example.)

[wednes.livejournal.com]

Oooh, a mountain dulcimer?
I love those.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Yep, my lovely husband bought me a Cripple Creek aspen-leaf model as a surprise.

I play the antique-style noter and drone, diatonic scale, so a lot of the old, old music works well on it.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

Right on!

I'd love to see a pic of that.
When I finally learned Simple Gifts in the DAD tuning, there was much rejoicing.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

I posted photos over in Friends of the Mountain Dulcimer (http://mountaindulcimer.ning.com/group/beginnerplayers/forum/topics/out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new-cripple-creek-aspen-leaves) if you care to click over.

I play almost entirely by ear, and my latest effort is Loch Lomond.

[wednes.livejournal.com]

Thanks! That's really beautiful.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Consult nineweaving.

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

Ever since I heard The Bonny Swans I've been trying to figure out how one would make a harp out of a swan, and how the dead-swan-formerly-dead-girl would then be able to recognize her evil sister and her former boyfriend when she has drowned, been turned into a swan, died all over again and been turned into a harp.