...the sizes and shapes and the number of strings are as varied as the cultures in which the instrument finds its origins. There remains a great deal of room for research and speculation about these origins, and also about how the dulcimer ended up in the Appalachian Mountain regions of the United States.

"Appalachian" is the name given to a series of composite mountain ranges stretching from New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont, through Virginia and West Virginia, and on into North Carolina, Tennessee, and Northern Georgia. (Some people even consider the Ozarks of Arkansas as part of the Appalachians.) In any case, the Appalachians, the oldest mountains on the North American continent, are far less rugged and altogether more hospitable than those which dominate the Western regions of the United States. And since the Appalachians mark the western boundary of the Eastern seaboard, they formed the first major physical barrier to westward expansion in colonial times and provided a major area for settlement.

Into these mountains came the adventurers, the criminals, the rugged individualists, and the general run-of-the-mill romantics from Western Europe. We'll leave the rest of the story to a course in United States History, but sometime, after the trees were felled and the land divided, people remembered their European traditions. They built instruments like those from back home, stringed instruments that sounded like Scotch-Irish bagpipes, appropriate for local "get-it-ons" and gatherings. There was no single inventor of the dulcimer-just a gentle synthesis from many cultures that led to instruments found today in many shapes and sizes, but all known by one name, "dulcimer"

And to distinguish this new instrument from the English Hammered Dulcimer, a zither-type instrument played with mallets, it became known as the "plucked Southern Appalachian Mountain Dulcimer."

To meet the social and musical demands of a rough-and-tumble, lively, hand-clapping, foot-stomping, knee-slapping "Sattidy Nite,' the dulcimer had to be rugged. From the extensive collection of Ann Grimes of Granville, Ohio, there is one dulcimer that immediately comes to mind because it has a 2 by 4 for a fretboard and bent-over spikes for frets. But this was more the exception than the rule, for the common dulcimer was a lap-sized instrument. Unable to compete adequately in volume and versatility with guitars, banjos, and fiddles, it slowly faded back into the hills and was considered all but a dead end by the 1930's.

Since then, people like John Jacob Niles and Jean Ritchie have done much to repopularize the dulcimer, but primarily as a soft-spoken, Lyrical solo instrument. Following the folk revival of the sixties and the post-'67 search for ethnic roots and Americana, however, the dulcimer has received greater attention as an instrument to be reckoned with. Central to this increasing interest have been Richard Farina, Paul Clayton, and Howie Mitchell, to name just a few. Each in his own way, with songs new and old, has infused new vitality into the near-forgotten dulcimer.

Our basic concern is teaching people to play the dulcimer in a contemporary manner. But even though we don't come from Appalachia, there is much we have learned from its musical traditions and techniques. And to those of you who are in the process of discovering the dulcimer for yourselves, take a good long look at the word "folk" because, really, it means you and what you do.

Your instrument ... what does it look like? (If you don't own one yet, consider the next section "What to look for when you buy one")

Generally, you'll find the Appalachian Mountain Dulcimer in five basic shapes, with a variety of stringing patterns, and practically any number of strings. Most commonly, dulcimers appear in three-, four-, five-, or six-string arrangements. Only one type is truly "multi-stringed"