If you were in the woods and found yourself in the middle of a pack of hungry wolves, what musical instrument would you want to have on you? Well, according to old Welsh folklore, you would want to have the crwth, a Welsh instrument. This is the legend of the black-haired crwth player, where a boy gets attacked by a pack of wolves and saves himself by playing the crwth. In this story, I’ll talk about the crwth, why it has such a weird name, and the instrument’s history.

What is the crwth? The crwth is a bowed 6-string instrument from Wales that is thought to be up to 1,415 years old. What makes this instrument so unique is how you play it. When somebody plays the crwth, they hold it sideways against their chest facing outward and bow it rather than having it on a shoulder or flat on the chest like most string instruments. In Wales, the crwth is one of the most popular instruments, and it’s one of the oldest traditional Welsh instruments.

If you clicked on this story, you probably have realized that this instrument has no vowels in its name. In English, there are no vowels in crwth, but w is actually a vowel in Welsh. You would pronounce the w more like an oo, so crwth is actually pronounced: “crooth”. The word crwth derives from the suffix “krutto-”, which describes something round in Proto-Celtic, an ancient Celtic language. The crwth’s name has different variations, like crowd, crwd, crout, and crouth, but crwth is the most common spelling.

The crwth is an ancient instrument that can be traced back to 609 A.D., so it has lots of history. Crwths have been played since Wales was under the control of the Roman Empire. The crwth came from the lyre, which is the ancestor of lots of popular instruments including the guitar, zither, and harp. The crwth originally had 2 pairs of 2 strings, like the byzaanchy I talked about in the last story. But around 1400 A.D, the crwth evolved into having 6 strings that were all equally distanced from each other. The crwth was also inspired by the rotta, another medieval European string instrument.

To sum it all up, the crwth is an interesting instrument with a very rich history. You can watch a video of somebody playing the crwth here. I think the crwth sounds cool, and it sounds similar to the byzaanchy, another instrument that I covered in the unique instrument series. The crwth is still used traditionally in festivals, but it isn’t used often in modern music. That was the story of the crwth. Toodles.