He says that most of the shop dulcimers in the Glasgow area had long bridges, but that whenever he broke a string, he would forget to thread the new one underneath the opposite bridge, and would have to start all over again; so he made them all separate bridges and "now I don't have to worry about the likes of that, you see!"
Certainly the instruments of the other Scots players visited all had long bridges; this is the only explanation ever heard for using chessmen bridges in straight lines (type y), but it seems a little too personal to be applied elsewhere.
