Previous Name for Mountain Dulcimer?

[Stephen Seifert]

From time to time, I do searches on Google Books to see if they've added any old books referring to the dulcimer. Could we make a list of all the names it might have been before dulcimer? Or maybe phrases writers would use to describe it? I'm always hoping to dig up some early reference to our instrument.

[kwl]

Stephen, here are some of the more obvious ones:

Appalachian dulcimer
Lap dulcimer
Plucked dulcimer
Hog fiddle
Scantlin'
American dulcimer (ala Charles N. Prichard)

Variations of the name:
delcemore
dulcirene

Ancestral names:
Scheitholt
Zitter and/or zither

Ken
"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

[strumelia]

Stephen, you will definitely want to look over these past threads about the various older names for the mountain dulcimer:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23647&hilit=names+for+the+mountain+dulcimer
and
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=23627&hilit=names+for+the+mountain+dulcimer

[folkfan]

I've come across "Stringed Bagpipe" a couple of times in older books.

[KenH]

If memory serves, in the Ozarks, they were sometimes known as an Indian Walking Stick or some such similar cognomen...

[Paul Gifford]

The late Si Braley, who was of Pittsburgh when he bought one in the late '30s, told me he had heard the name "Job's coffin" for it. Looking the term up on Google, evidently it was the name of a diamond-shaped constellation.

Paul Gifford