Fwd: Re: Music to the Child Ballads

[Zoe L. Kuhn]

Re: Grey area

According to Brett Williams:
> am guilty of several deliberate usages of grey-area artifacts within
> the Society's context: in particular, I play (mostly) period music
> using a grey-area instrument (a fretted dulcimer), and sing grey-area
> songs (old ballad texts with tunes of questionable date). Am I entirely
> comfortable doing this? No-- but that's perhaps an argument best left
> for a different thread.
> 
> I define grey-area in this sense as 'possibly within the Society's
> period, but conclusively unprovable either way".  For example, the song
> 
> ciorstan

I want to go off on a tangent you brought up-

I have seen documents that conclude the fretted dulcimer gets
its roots from a 18th century instrument (the name escapes me
now) which was developed in Germany.  According to this
research there is no grey area about the fretted dulcimer;
there is no record of them prior to the 18th century ancestors.

If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd love to know where to
look it up.  

And what about them bowed psalteries?

I'll shut up now.

Chriemhilt von Regensburg