Is it a violin, harp or lyre?
None of the above
It's a Welsh crwth. Essentially it's a bardic instrument for accompanying your own singing. There are two schools of thought about a playing position for it - some people play it cello-fashion between the knees, others hank a neck-strap under the tailpiece to help them play it under the chin like a fiddle. The instrument even has a star player, at least in the "folk" vein - Cass Meurig. There are substantial accounts of the instrument being used in Wales for minstrelsy.
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrwthI'm ashamed to say I even have one of these things - a modern reproduction prototype that was passed-on by several people who didn't want or need it, and ended-up in Reiner's Elephant's Graveyard of Unpopular and Unplayable Instruments. The one I've got needs a new bridge designed - it's got a flat bridge right now. This is (said the guy who made it) because all the strings were supposed to be bowed simultaneously (like a hurdy-gurdy) and the player allegedly played chords all the time. Frankly this drove everyone who tried this copy nuts, and no-one wants to do that all the time. Cass Meurig plays an instrument with a fiddle-shaped bridge, so you can play individual strings. I'm not sure about the "authenticity" of either approach, but I have no plans to take up the instrument any time soon
The bridge is an odd thing on a crwth anyhow, because it also acts as the soundpost and goes straight through the soundholes to rest of the back of the instrument - there is no other soundpost inside. Opinion divides as to whether the extra strings that don't run over the fingerboard (the pic above has one, but you can find examples with 2-3 of them - mine has 2) are supposed to be bowed as a bourdon, or plucked now and then with the thumb? Or maybe both?
There are all kinds of elaborate theories that it's the last survivor of the medieval
crotta or rote, but it's hard to prove. Even harder to substantiate are claims that there's an unbroken line going back to the roman lyre (seems more likely that the vogue for classical civilisation in the Renaissance prompted the idea of trying to recreate lyres?) I'd hesitate to jump in and make any assertion of that kind. It's the kind of instrument that "looks the business" in medieval music performances, but actually hasn't much of a pedigree. However, since no kind of standardisation of instruments of any kind existed prior to about the C15th anyhow, and most players probably made their own instruments (or souped them up, adding extra strings, new tunings, etc) it's not entirely impossible that something along these lines didn't exist? There are pics, to be sure - but almost always of King David, who was said to have played some bowed thingy or other... translators are often guilty of inserting the name of an instrument of their own times, since they didn't know what he actually played (and didn't care either). I've restrung mine (it arrived in my hands with overwound metal violin strings on it) with gut viola strings, and have used it to play tenor lines in Machaut chansons, in the absence of having anything better to use (I have a repro medieval fidel that played the other line, and a singer sang the top one). Frankly it's too quiet for ensemble use, and is thus just gathering dust right now.
Perhaps our resident Welsh composers would care to create a new repertoire for the instrument?
Or perhaps, ehem, not
