Scottish folk music instruments

the smooth sytharist,
The croude additionally the monycordis, the gittyrnis homosexual;
The rote, and recordour, the rivupe, the rist,
The trumpe therefore the talburn, the tympane but tray;
The lilt pipeline as well as the lute, the fydill in fist,
The dulset, the dulsacordis, the schalme of Assay;
The amyable organis usir complete oft;
Claryonis lowde knellis,
Portativis and bellis,
Cymbaclanis [cymbaelanis] within the cellis,
That soundis therefore smooth."

Henry George Farmer
A brief history of Musical in Scotland
London, 1947
p. 87

The guitar, the "gittyrn gay" of Holland, ended up being unlike the lute in lots of respects. It had a-flat sound-chest like the fiddle, and even it could be called a plucked fiddle, for these types of nomenclature obtained in Spain where the 2 kinds of tool had been called the vihuela de penola and vihuela de arco. The sythol of the poets ended up being the tool understood in England since the citole. It was pear-shaped and vault-chested, but its mind ended up being straight, maybe not turned-back at a right direction like lute. There is certainly a sculptured instance at Roslyn Castle (fifteenth cent.). Both the gittyrn together with sythol appear to have had four strings and, like lute, had been played with the fingers or a plectrum.

Ibid., p. 91

We've four devices associated with the lute class delineated by Wood in his psalter (1562-66), which wthhold the ancient Oriental outline and mien. The initial that develops in the psalter's margin is a four string lute featuring its characteristic bridge-tailpiece or string-holder. The next tool, with an inferior and hemispherical sound-chest, is probably a pandore. And also this has four strings. The fourth tool into the margin for the opposing page associated with the psalter might conceivably be the mandore, since its strings aren't mounted on a string-holder regarding belly of tool, but apparently to small pins beneath the base. All three devices have convex sound-chests.

The "jocund" githorn of Burel was just like Holland's gittyrn "gay" associated with the preceding century, additionally the similarity for the honorific adjective is moving strange. It had a set sound-chest with incurvatures at the part just like the contemporary guitar, that is its linear and lineal descendant. Again we read the githorn had been among the devices regarding the pupils at St. Andrews in 1574. In Donaldson range within Royal university of Music in London there is certainly a guitar which "is said" having belonged to Mary Queen of Scots. The tool itself shows French craftsmanship although this cannot fundamentally exclude the Scottish queen's ownership from it. The gittern, gittyrn, or githorn in addition had four strings, even as we know from Anthony Holborne's Cittharne School (1597).