This is the story behind the thesis - originally written for the double-cassette album 'I thought I was the only one' on the Veteran label - Thanks for asking, John!

'IT WAS THE DULCIMER ITSELF THAT WORKED THE MAGIC ...'

So often something wonderful comes out of what at first seems like the most awful failure...

'Are you sure the dulcimer really needs writing about?', I so clearly remember my professor saying in his slow northern accent: 'I mean, nothing much has been written about the Piccolo Bassoon, but it doesn't mean that anything needs writing about it, does it...?' He was telling me they didn't like the way I conducted - 'too much dancing' - and that I'd get a better degree if I graduated by playing the clarinet, or writing a thesis about something instead.

I'd seen my first dulcimer picture in 'The Observer's Book of Music', and found my first live instrument propping open the door of a junk shop in Gloucester... By the time I was finished with my formal music studies - and was ready to start finding out what music really is and does - I'd worked with my hero Dave Williams both within and without the English Folk Dance & Song Society for a number of years, and had been privileged to take as my own the first dulcimer he'd made; I'd played duets with Jimmy Cooper; Russell Wortley had played his tapes of Billy Cooper and Walter Geary to me, and finally and rather shyly played for me himself... ; and Reg Hall had shared his rare 78's and wax cylinders of the Henry Ford band...

So it wasn't too hard - even for an effete youngster who'd hardly ever been in pubs much, and actually didn't like beer - to pick up the shattered pieces of self-esteem which the professor had left and follow the trail wherever it led, driving in a mini-van into completely unknown parts of the country, jack-knifing myself into a shape that would fit into it for sleeping, dining on fish-and-chips and cheese butties, and resorting to the hitch-hiker's thumb when the stars led me even further afield...

Somehow it was the dulcimer itself that worked the magic. From Wells-next-the-Sea to Appenzell-bei-dem-See, from the Alps of Styria to the Glens of Antrim, I first felt myself met with a guarded suspicion, coming with questions about such an out-of-the-way thing as a dulcimer; but the moment I said I played, or simply showed the instrument, it seemed that all doors were open - to a warm hearth with fresh soda bread and republican politics in Tipperary, to a private Bierstube in Graz, to the closed archives of a Music Museum in Stockholm; it took me directly from street-busking and sleeping rough to international flights and TV studios, from traditional hornpipes and dancing dolls to renaissance pavanes and galliards - and indirectly even to a graduate college in Oxford and a professorship in Baltic Dorpat (Tartu).

The way included so many delightful discoveries - how can you single any of them out? Finding John Youngman of Wells, by idling beside a whelking boat on a boring family holiday and longing to go out to sea in it; linking up with Molly Whitaker, whose main reputation locally wasn't because she played the dulcimer, but because 'she do polish 'er pipes'; seeing the whole gamut of domestic situations from Iris Bennington's engrossed support of Billy's playing, to others whose dulcimers lay under the bed for the sake of domestic harmony; the kindness of Bill Fell who, when I ordered - for money - one of his instruments with inlaid marquetry and lids over the pins, made - for the sake of friendship - a miniature version of the same instrument, only 6" x 12" but tunable and perfectly playable with matchsticks for a dolls-house party: and of course it took just as long to do as the big one; the artistic polish of Leslie Evans, whose cherished dream was I think to play in a 'serious' concert context...

Ted Carr aiming for stardom in a completely different world, that of entertainment, as he put on his best togs to play at an East End Methodist church hall; the "do-it-yourself" legs of John Chapman and all his other nifty inventions realised and projected, like a dulcimer so highly amplified that you would just rub the strings to play it, like a glass harmonica; playing for New Forest barn dances with Jimmy Cooper and Ted Duckett - the clattering of the two dulcimers and the bones mollified by Dave Williams' guitar and his lovely singing voice - so strong but oh, so soft and moving...

Wild goose chases? Yes, of course there were some: but surprisingly few - and mostly because of the authoritative pronouncements of half-knowledgeable musicologists, rather than 'local inhabitants', who always knew what they were talking about, so didn't need to say it loudly.

The saddest parts? The way so many pubs had introduced fitted carpets, juke-boxes and TVs, so that those I met who did still play the old tunes did so pretty much only at home... John Rea leaving his instrument in Antrim because of troubled times in Belfast... Dropping my hammers between the planks of Bournemouth pier, and trying to manage the evening's gig with toothbrushes which simply didn't have the right balance... The almost-overwhelming longing to 'help' just a little bit by retuning the one or two notes that disturbed a whole recording session - and the complete impossibility of doing it... After four days of waltzes and polkas, giving up trying to explain to an Alpine Hack-Brettler the concept of 'music you can't tap your foot to'... The discovery that having learnt to tune harp and harpsichord, I could no longer tune a dulcimer so that it felt good; and the conflict of disloyalty when I found I could move people's feelings more by plucking the gut of the harp than the steel of the dulcimer...

And the most satisfying parts of it all? One was to be accepted into some kind of brotherhood by some of the most lovely people you could meet, as a Norfolk old-timer says in an encouraging way 'ha' ye got yer music?'; another is to see the sparkling sounds and the beautiful name of the dulcimer coming back into the spotlight again, after a period when almost no-one had ever seen one; another was to be asked to write the 'dulcimer' article in the New Grove's Dictionary, after my professor's first crushing doubt; and perhaps most important in the longer term, to find a way of writing a thesis so that the academics would accept it, but at the same time a traditional player could read it and say, 'Yes, that's me right enough...'

click on the arrow to start: there's a smoother version @ 380 Kb here

Nowadays it's people-friendly multimedia on the Mac which takes up most of my energies (click on the control bar alongside here...), and playing the harp: these pages are the start of a long-term project to put all the dulcimer material I've collected onto the Web, and to put all the photos, stories and recordings together as a CD-ROM or a DVD. So far about two-thirds is done, including the history up to 1600, the playing traditions of the British Isles, other countries from Eastern Europe to the Pacific, a section about the late lamented Dave Williams, and few examples of my own use of the dulcimer.

It's one project of many, and priorities are very much determined by what people show interest in. But remember - the basic view presented here was worked out 30 years ago: while creating this www version I've updated things where I've found new material but it's not the last word on anything, and I'm still waiting to hear about all the ways in which other people have taken things further on ...

formerly Mid-Sweden University & Tartu University, Estonia