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There are many pictures of Crwths that I could have chosen to illustrate the post about a crwth, but this one by Hank Taylor from Tallahasse (see http://www.taylorviolins.com/) looks really nice. Note: I've never played one of these.

Brogan's most excellent foray into the art of the luthier got me thinking, and at Imbolc I mentioned to him that I have always wanted to have a Crwthwhich is a bowed version of the ancient Lyre - basically a precursor to the modern violin.Pronounced 'krooth', the instrument is depicted on ancient tomb paintings from Egyptian times, and apparently survived in some form in Ireland and Wales until at least the 18th century.According to some of the sites below, the lyre had made it to Europe by the early Christian era, and the Crwth may have been in Wales at least as early as Roman times.So the Crwth seems a period instrument for our purposes.

The Crwth in Egypt is clearly depicted as played with a plectrum (a pick), and held like a guitar strap and all.By the time it went completely out of favor four thousand years later in Wales it was usually bowed with a curved or straight bow (like a violin bow), but it's questionable if the bow was a recent addition at that time since the violin was replacing the Crwth at the time.

The Welsh Crwth site
http://www.crwth.info/
has a bunch of info in Welsh and English

The Crwth through the ages
http://www.sedayne.co.uk/crwth.html

Here's a picture of a nice Crwth:
http://www.taylorviolins.com/crwth_page.html

The Wikipedia article links to the sites above
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crwth