Hammered Dulcimer

[OC Richard]

Well, the people at the Smithsonian are wrong about other stuff too- they think each Native American language is an isolate, and don't recognise any larger groupings (the nasty Greenberg v Smithsonian controversy).

If it came from England, or Ireland, where is the evidence? Where are the examples? These phrases like "no doubt..." are red flags warning the reader that the writer has no evidence.

These people need to read a bit on the subject.

The first systematic examination of existing Appalachian dulcimers was undertaken by L Allen Smith in A Catalogue of Pre-Revival Appalachian Dulcimers, which I have in front of me now.

In it he writes:

"That the Appalachian dulimer evolved from the Pennsylvania German Zither is the most widely held theory... those who have argued against this theory have postulated two means by which the dulcimer appeared in the Appalachian Mountains: first, that it evolved form another version of the European instrument, and second that it spontaneously appeared in the Appalachian Mountains without reference to previous instruments. The first possibility was endorsed by John Jacob Niles, Jean Thomas, and, on the lack of any other evidence, by Henry Mercer, all of whom claim that the dulcimer is a descendant of an English instrument. This rather untenable postition was fully discussed by Seeger and it need not concern us here. There remains the possibility that fretted zithers were made in the United States by emigrant groups other than the Germans, for example the Scandinavians, but there is no record of Scandinavian migrations into the Upland South on the same scale as the Pennsylvania German migrants, and it has been shown that the fretted zither probably did accompany the Pennsylvania Germans into the Upland South.
These writers and those who endorse English origin were working with very little data and seem to have been influenced by a reluctance to admit the Pennsylvania German influence and a predisposition for things American and English. The instruments in the Catalogue here show that Pennsylvania German zithers can be found in many areas of the Upland South and were therefore at least a part of the cultural inventory of the inhabitants quite possibly before the dulcimer was developed."

What the Cataloque has done is to examine all known existing pre-1940 Applachian dulcimers, whether in private hands or museums, establishing for the first time evidence of evolution of the instrument, different schools of makers, and regional variation.