I have been browsing through the James Madison Carpenter collection recently put up on line and had a look at Gloucestershire Mummers plays. In the Didbrook play (Didbrook is a hamlet near where I live), the performer sings a song and Carpenter has written: "Has humpscump - chine of a barrel with three pieces of string and a bow like a fiddle, made of horse hair".

Another Gloucester Mummers play, this time from Sapperton, has this "Father Scrump carries the humpenscrump made with a tin with wires across and bridge and a stick with notches for a bow."

The Morris researcher Cawte mentions a humpscrump being used to accompany Border Morris (but I can't find the reference).

Thomas Lanchbury (1865-1934), a traditional Gloucestershire folk singer, remembered the home-made fiddle that supplied the music for Morris dancing. He said that it was made with two tins fixed at either end of a stick of wood with a piece of whipchord [sic] stretched across from one tin to the other. A bow was used but he couldn't remember how the notes were made. He said ?there wasn?t much of a tune about it, it just kept the dancers going. It probably served to mark the rhythm.? The song collector remarked that this was probably a humpenscrump.

Google has it that a humpenscrump is "A crude musical instrument like a hurdy-gurdy."

Does anyone else have any information on this curious instrument and its use?

Also, what part of the barrel is the "chine"?

Tradsinger