Abrahams’s response really piqued my curiosity! I wrote to Edd Presnell, providing the information Abrahams had given me and asking Presnell if he knew who the maker might be. He sent me a handwritten reply. Here it is, with orthography preserved:
Banner Elk N.C.
Dec 17, 1968
Dear Mr. Smith
Thank you for your letter regarding who made your old Dulcimer. After making a few phone calls I contacted Edna Shepherd now remarried who was the wife of Frank Glenn the man who made your Dulcimer. She recalled the name of Abraham as the man they Had Shipped a number of Dulcimers to. Hope this answers your questions. Whenever you are in this area Drop by to see me.
Thanks
Sincerely
Edd R. Presnell
I then contacted Edna Shepherd myself and drove down to western North Carolina to visit her. I learned from her that Frank Glenn was related to Leonard and Clifford Glenn (see chapter 7) and was Clifford’s cousin. (I subsequently learned that Frank, in addition to being a farmer, worked part-time in a furniture factory during the winter months. His correct date of death was April 5, 1960, age 39.) She brought out three of Frank’s dulcimers and offered to give me one! I refused to accept it. “I have one,” I said, “and it’s wonderful!”
I also visited Edd Presnell. He showed me a dulcimer made by Ben Hicks about 1935 and told me about the legend of “the Stranger from the West” (see both figure 5.7 and the story in chapter 5). I returned home, hooked for life, and this book is one of the results.
2 Where Did the Dulcimer Come From?
Where Did the Dulcimer Come From?
The origins of the dulcimer kept many people guessing for a long time. There were several theories, each with its partisans.
MOUNTAIN ORIGINS?
Could it be that the dulcimer didn’t come from anywhere—that it was “born in the hills” of Appalachia? Many mountain people thought so. The July 21, 1963, issue of the New York Times carried a story with the headline, “Kentucky Dulcimer Maker Says Interest Gains in U.S.” The story described the rapidly growing sales being enjoyed by old-time maker Jethro Amburgey of Hindman, Kentucky (see chapter 6). “The dulcimer, as we now know it, has never been traced down as to who originated it,” the article quotes Amburgey as saying. “The best information obtained is that it originated in the Appalachian highlands.”
When Jean Ritchie was a youngster growing up in the Cumberlands in the 1920s and 1930s, she thought so, too. The opinion was undoubtedly shared by many people in her world. “Once I would have been ready to fight with anyone who dared to say or imply that our plucked dulcimer did not originate in our own Southern Appalachians,” she wrote in her book, The Dulcimer Book, published in 1963. “To me, Kentucky mountain songs and their dulcimer accompaniments seem to have been made at the same time and for each other.”
FROM THE BRITISH ISLES?
Some people, however, doubted that an instrument as well developed as the dulcimer had never been seen anywhere else. For these people, the logical place of ancestry was the British Isles. This theory had reinforcement from the facts that the instrument’s traditional home in the mountains was among settlers whose ancestors came from the British Isles and that music played on it in its mountain world was of English, Scottish, and Irish origin. People who favored this view included Patrick Gainer, John Jacob Niles, and Jean Thomas, founder of the American Folk Song Festival. All had great familiarity with the Appalachian world.
The theory was backed up by information that was associated with some old instruments. For example, in January 1957, Ed Cray of Los Angeles purchased a dulcimer from the estate of a lady named Stella Campbell of Pasadena, California. A handwritten slip of paper accompanying the instrument stated that it is “Scotch,” of the kind “made by the Clan Campbell for five generations.”
There was one persistent problem with this theory. No one could find a dulcimer, or any other type or form of diatonically fretted zither, in the traditional cultures of England, Scotland, or Ireland. It was the play, but with no Hamlet.
FROM GERMANY, OF ALL PLACES?
A third possibility was cited by Josephine McGill in her article on the dulcimer that she published in The Musician in 1917:
As is true of more familiar instruments, the origin of the dulcimer is obscure. Strangely enough, it bears closer resemblance to the eighteenth-century German zither than to any other known instrument. (See Catalogue of Musical Instruments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1901, page 51. No. 988.)
Maud Karpeles, Cecil Sharp’s collaborator, picked up the thread. In her introduction to English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, published in 1932, she wrote:
The history of [the dulcimer’s] introduction into the mountains is obscure, but it may be noted that a similar instrument, catalogued as a German zither of the eighteenth century, is exhibited in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and if this classification is correct it is possible that the instrument was introduced by the early German settlers, who drifted into the mountains from Pennsylvania.
In a footnote, Karpeles identified the instrument as “Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, No. 988.”
As it turned out, it was a classic case of being led into the right barn by the wrong horse. What is item no. 988 in the Met’s Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments? It is a three-string, hourglass-shaped instrument with heart-shaped sound holes, looking exactly like a traditional American dulcimer—which is exactly what it is!
In the period 1974–1977, a researcher named L. Allen Smith traveled throughout Appalachia, searching for, finding, and photographing old dulcimers and learning everything he could about their histories. In 1979, he incorporated his findings into a doctoral dissertation, and in 1983 he summarized the information in a book entitled A Catalogue of Pre-Revival Appalachian Dulcimers. The book described 191 instruments made prior to 1940, of which 155 were dulcimers and 36 were a type of instrument that Allen called “Pennsylvania German zithers.” We will hear more about his work, and about these “zithers,” soon.
Allen’s finds included seven virtually identical instruments, with several of them bearing fragments of labels indicating that they had been made in Huntington, West Virginia (see chapter 5). One of them was the Metropolitan Museum’s no. 988, which the museum had acquired in 1889! Actually, the Met already believed that the instrument was misidentified. When no. 988 had been catalogued, there was virtually no scholarly knowledge of the dulcimer. In the museum world, more was then known about things that had been made in Europe hundreds of years ago than was known about items that were then being made a few hundred miles away.
Wrong horse. But what about the barn, Germany? And those “Pennsylvania German zithers”?
WHAT JEAN RITCHIE SAW
In 1948, having graduated summa cum laude from the University of Kentucky, Jean Ritchie, of Viper, Kentucky, arrived in New York to do social work at Henry Street Settlement. She brought a dulcimer with her. It created a sensation, and soon ran away with her life. By 1950, she had begun to give public performances and had made her first record.
In 1949, Ritchie visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a friend. There she saw something that astonished her. It wasn’t no. 988, it was something else. In her own words in The Dulcimer Book, she described the scene:
As we were strolling from room to room, we noticed a case holding an exhibition of old stringed musical instruments. One of them caught my eye because it had a familiar look about it, being a long box-like thing with the same musical scale (same spacing between frets, on a similarly-shaped soundbox) as our Kentucky dulcimers. The label gave it the name, German scheitholt.
Ritchie was immediately convinced that, unlikely as it might seem, the instrument she was looking at was the long-sought-after genuine ancestor of the Appalachian dulcimer. She was right.
FRETTED ZITHERS OF EUROPE
The instrument in the Met’s display case was a member of a family of northern and eastern Eu
ropean fretted zithers. Under various names and in numerous shapes and forms, they had existed and thrived in the folk cultures of many countries as far back as the Renaissance and, probably, the later Middle Ages. In German-speaking areas, the instrument was called the scheitholt; in the Low Countries, the hummel or Nordische balk; in northeastern France, the epinette des Vosges; in Norway, the langeleik; in Sweden, the humle; and in Finland, the jouhi kantele. A one-string instrument with a raised and centered fretboard, called a psalmodikon, also developed in Norway and Sweden. Fretted zithers were made and played in Hungary and Romania as well, and the instrument even migrated to Iceland, where it was called the langspil.
The earliest dated specimen so far found is from 1608. It is illustrated in a publication entitled De Hommel in de Lage Landen (The Hummel in the Low Countries) by Hubert Boone, issued by the Brussels Museum of Musical Instruments in 1975. The instrument, which is in the Community Museum at The Hague, is thin and narrow and had either one or two strings (it currently has one peg, and the photograph is unclear).
Fretted zithers were folk instruments, and they endured a long history of disdain by mainstream musicologists. In Boone’s publication, he cites the opinion of an 18th-century Friesian musical authority, John Wilhelm Lustig. In the introduction to his book Inleiding tot de Muzierkkunde, published in 1771, Lustig states that he will have nothing to do with such instruments as the noorsche balk, which, he says, are played at fairs and by soldiers.
Whoever may have played them, at least one American scholar, Charles Seeger, regarded such instruments as prime suspects in the search for the dulcimer’s origins. In an article entitled “The Appalachian Dulcimer,” which appeared in the Journal of American Folklore (January–March 1958), Seeger stated his opinion that the dulcimer is a full-fledged member of this European group. The dulcimer, Seeger wrote, is a
fretted zither (Griffbrettzither) belonging to a well-defined subclass upon which the melody is played on one string (or several in unison or even parallel thirds) while others sound as drones. The subclass is well represented in European organography especially in the northern region. . . . The European provenience of our instrument [the dulcimer] is clearly established in all but minor detail.
Seeger doesn’t specify what he meant by “minor detail,” but he may have had in mind one noticeable difference between most European fretted zithers and the Appalachian dulcimer. With only a few atypical exceptions, the series of frets on European fretted zithers is applied directly to the instrument’s top, along the edge that faces the player. With the dulcimer, the series of frets is placed on a raised fretboard that runs down the center of the top. Freed from the necessity of having a straight side facing the player, the body of the dulcimer usually has various broader shapes, with the most common type being a single or double curve.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Some types of northern European fretted zithers are known in the United States. Figure 2.1 is a photo of a player of the Norwegian langeleik, in full traditional Norwegian costume. The instrument’s features include a peg of trefoil design on the side, matching the design of the pegs in the peg box. Fred Petrick, a loyal member of the jungle telegraph, spotted the photo on eBay, bid on it, won it, scanned it in, and sent it to me. “It’s a carte de visite, about 2X4 inches, out of Minnesota,” he wrote. “Cartes de visite were a popular photo type from around the Civil War to about 1900.” Regarding the player’s costume, Petrick explained, “I Googled ‘Norwegian costume 19th century’ and immediately learned that our mystery player is wearing a 19th-century costume called a bunad. It’s still popular today.”
Figure 2.2 shows a psalmodikon, a type of instrument that arrived in the United States in the 19th century with immigrants from Scandinavia. The psalmodikon originated in Denmark about 1820 and was quickly adapted in Norway and Sweden as a substitute for the fiddle for playing music in churches. Church authorities in both countries regarded the fiddle as inappropriate for playing hymns because it was also used to play dance music. The psalmodikon, however, received their warm endorsement. The instrument, which is bowed, has a single string that runs over a chromatic fretboard. The psalmodikon that is shown in the photo has wooden frets, formed by a series of peaks and valleys cut into the fretboard. There is a single tuning peg at the foot.
Figure 2.1. Carte de visite from Minnesota, second half of the 19th century, showing a langeleik player in traditional Norwegian dress. (Courtesy Fred Petrick)
This psalmodikon dates to about the 1840s and comes from the Bishop Hill Colony in Illinois, which was established by Swedish immigrants in the mid-1840s. Franklin Lewis Matteson, born in Sweden about 1844, came to Bishop Hill with his family when he was about 10 years old. Franklin’s son, Maurice Matteson, a musician and folklorist, became chairman of the music department at the University of South Carolina and made a number of visits to Bishop Hill. In 1943, Jonas Bergren, a resident of Bishop Hill and a musical instrument collector, gave the instrument to Maurice. It passed to his son, Richard, who became a professor at the University of Maryland. In 2008, Richard Matteson returned the psalmodikon to Bishop Hill for its historical collection.
The psalmodikon is enjoying a minirevival in the United States. Beatrice Hole of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, is president of an organization of enthusiasts called the Nordic-American Psalmodikonforbundet. The organization sponsors get-togethers, issues a newsletter, and maintains a website (www.psalmodikon.org). In 2005, Hole published a book entitled Music for Psalmodikon, Written in Sifferskrift, in which many hymns, Christmas songs, and other songs are laid out in four-part harmony for four psalmodikons, in a traditional form of psalmodikon tablature called sifferskrift. It was the first songbook to be published with siffer-skrift notation in more than a hundred years. In 2008, the group issued the world’s first CD of psalmodikon music, with four players playing in harmony.
Figure 2.2. Psalmodikon from Bishop Hill Colony in Illinois, founded by Swedish immigrants in the 1840s. (Courtesy Richard Matteson)
However, despite their presence in the United States, none of these instruments is the direct ancestor of the Appalachian dulcimer. Specimens are few and scattered, and they are rarely or never found in the dulcimer’s mountain world. For that, we must look to the scheitholt.
THE SCHEITHOLT
In 1619, a German scholar whose Latinized name was Michael Pretorius published a descriptive catalogue of musical instruments, entitled Syntagma Musicum. The book was illustrated with woodcuts, one of which is shown in figure 2.3. Instrument no. 8 is identified as a “Scheidtholtt.” This instrument has been accurately observed by the artist, and its fret pattern can be made out. It is fretted to play two octaves of the major (Ionian) scale, starting at the open string.
The book provides a description of the scheitholt, in old block letter printing and in Renaissance German. I am grateful to Christa Fannon of Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, a student in a dulcimer workshop that I taught, for providing the following translation:
Although this instrument should rightly be listed among low-class instruments: So I have nevertheless / since it is known to few / wanted to briefly describe it here. And it is not quite unlike a log [Scheit] / or piece of wood / since it is nearly like a small monochord rather poorly put together out of three or four small thin boards / at the top with a small neck / in which stick three or four pegs / strung with three or four brass strings: Of which three are strung in unison / but one of them is forced down in the middle with a small hook / so that it has to resonate one fifth higher: And if desired / one can add a fourth string one octave higher. But one strums continuously across all these strings with the right thumb below at the bridge: and one moves with a small smooth stick in the left hand back and forth on the closest string / whereby the melody of the song is accomplished over the fret-board / if embossed with brass wire. [Author’s note: Pretorius probably meant “which is fretted with brass wire.”]
It is interesting to note that Pretorius, writing a century and a half before Lustig, ha
s already consigned our “low-class” instrument to the musical doghouse!
Although I do not find the tuning information entirely clear, it would seem that the tuning, with the added octave string, would produce a 1-5-8 (do-sol-high do) chord, with the first note of the scale at the open melody string. The strumming technique speaks for itself. I played with my thumb when I was a novice dulcimer enthusiast in Greenwich Village in the early days of the folk revival! (To see it, check the picture on page 20 in my book Greenwich Village. What are a few centuries among zither-playing friends?)
Figure 2.3. Woodcut from Syntagma Musicum by Michael Pretorius, published in 1619. Instrument no. 8 is a “Scheidtholtt.”
THE SCHEITHOLT/ZITTER IN AMERICA
The scheitholt came to America with early German settlers. Or at least, a clear memory of it came, since it seems likely that an instrument that a skilled German craftsman could easily make would rarely have been carried in the crowded conditions of the crossing. The instrument was soon being made and played in the German settlements in Pennsylvania.
Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions Page 3
