A couple of years ago, there was a period "reality" TV series where a group of historians lived on a farm - as of the 17th century. And, on one episode, a period musician made a visit with, from memory, a crumhorn, pipe a tabor, mouth-blown Leistershire bagpipes, and an English cittern with 5 times 2 wire strings - plucked with a (plucked?!) feather-plectrum. So my hunch is that they were used, a lot apparently, in barber-shops and taverns, to accompany songs with just the top-line melody with, perhaps, some embellishment of it. But, if for centuries E. trads were sung unaccompanied, what were these songs?...early "barber-shop songs"?..folk-come-art songs?...and who is performing them now?...