CHAPTER 4: Dulcimers in the British Isles since 1800 > Dulcimers in the Midlands & the North

Midlands & North - Instruments

There remain a few isolated and incomplete references which are included here in case they are later seen to form part of a more general pattern.

A busker was seen in the streets of Liverpool in the mid 1950s, hammering his dulcimer whilst pushing it along on a pram so that he could not be charged with loitering. Billy Bennington recalls the same thing in Norwich from before the last war.

Leslie Evans remembers:

They had a dulcimer-player on television when that came in; they had one on Hughie Green, but you couldn't tell what he was doing, he was going as fast as you like, he was trying to race the orchestra, well, I mean, to my mind, that's rubbish:I like to put a piece on, say Silent Worship ...

The rest is in the context of what Mr. Evans wanted to achieve in his own music.

An instrument was recently [1976] seen by Ian Dunmur in Appleby, Westmorland, apparently of Victorian vintage, and having only a single long bridge. Apart from one recent example made as an experiment by David Williams this seems to be unique in Britain, and it is perhaps possible that a bass bridge has been present at one time, perhaps long ago.

A few rather vague reports have been received about players in the Tyneside area, but it has not yet been possible to verify them.