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

[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".