The Big Skill

Stalls were crammed into the main room of the Globe yesterday for the Big Skill craft fair. There was felting and knitting, and a charity that cannibalises old books to make notebooks, and Adele Nozedar's book about sweets. On one side there was a chap splitting the bark off a hazel rod, surrounded by split hazel baskets, and just beyond him there was a maker of traditional instruments. He was stringing a little mandolin-type thing when I saw him, but on his table was a medieval Welsh crwth and a pipe made with wood and sheep horn that I didn't recognise at all.

These are not his instruments - I found the picture online. The one standing up is a crwth, played with a bow like a violin, though the instrument maker said that he had found that the bowing technique is entirely different. The idea is more to make a sort of droning background sound, over which other instruments like the pibgyrn are played. This is the pipe, which he said was like the chanter of Scottish bagpipes, and could be played attached to a bag as well. The wood is elder, and it was something shepherds could make while they were out on the hills.
I wish I was musical.