The ''tautirut'' (

Inuktitut syllabics Inuktitut syllabics ( iu, ᖃᓂᐅᔮᖅᐸᐃᑦ, qaniujaaqpait, or , ) is an abugida-type writing system used in Canada by the Inuktitut-speaking Inuit of the territory of Nunavut and the Nunavik and Nunatsiavut regions of Quebec and Labra ...

: or ''tautiruut'', also known as the Eskimo fiddle) is a bowed

zither Zithers (; , from the Greek word ''cithara'') are a class of stringed instruments. Historically, the name has been applied to any instrument of the psaltery family, or to an instrument consisting of many strings stretched across a thin, flat bo ...

native to the

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

culture of

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. Lucien M. Turner described the "Eskimo violin" in 1894 as being The Canadian anthropologist Ernest William Hawkes described the tautirut in 1916:

Origin

The ''tautirut'', along with the

Apache fiddle The Apache fiddle (Apache: tsii' edo'a'tl, "wood that sings") is a bowed string instrument used by the indigenous Apache people of the southwestern United States. The instrument consists of a plant stalk, such as that of the agave or mescal plant ...

are among the few

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: **First Natio ...

chordophones which may possibly be

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...

in origin. Ethnomusicologist

Anthony Baines Anthony Cuthbert Baines (1912–1997) was an English organologist who produced a wide variety of works on the history of musical instruments, and was a founding member of the Galpin Society. He attended Westminster School and then read for a deg ...

and others have noted the similarity of the ''tautirut'' to the Icelandic ''

fiðla The ''Icelandic fiddle'' (Icelandic: fiðla �fɪðla is a traditional Icelandic instrument that can be described as a box with two brass strings which is played with a bow. The strings stretch across one end of the box to the other where they ...

'' and Shetland

gue The gue is an extinct type of two-stringed Bowed string instrument, bowed lyre or zither from the Shetland Isles. The instrument was described in 1809 by Arthur Edmondston in ''View of the Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Islands'':"Before ...

. Peter Cooke believed that the ''tautiruts limited distribution around the Hudson Bay area indicated that it was introduced to the Inuit by

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...

sailors from the

Orkney Orkney (; sco, Orkney; on, Orkneyjar; nrn, Orknøjar), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the island of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north ...

and

Shetland Islands Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the no ...

.Peter Cooke. ''The fiddle tradition of the Shetland Isles. CUP Archive, 1986. , 978-0-521-26855-4. p. 5.

External links

Tautirut
in the collection of the Faculté de musique,

Université de Montréal The Université de Montréal (UdeM; ; translates to University of Montreal) is a French-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university's main campus is located in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood of Côte-de ...

References

Bowed box zithers Inuit musical instruments Bowed lyres Canadian musical instruments {{Zither-instrument-stub

Origin

External links

Further reading

References