Well Lady Jean, have you ever heard a Rackett played?
If you do, you will know where the use fo the word in modern times came from.

When I was a little kid, my mother's father used to entertain me with knives. the old kitchen table was such that just under the top, you could slide in table knives - the thype which had the back and front edges of the blade parallel - and by setting them at differing lenghts, you could get several tones, and make a tune.

Also an old instrument is The Glass Harmonica. Benjamin Franklin apparently worked out some improvements. The modern form is of a set of nested glass bowls that are rotated by a motor, and you touch your fingertips to the edge of the bowls to make a tune.

An earlier form is to take glasses - the better crystal the purer the tone - and partially fill each to tune it. You rub your clean slightly moistened finger around the clean edge of the rim. You can also strike each one gently with a teaspoon or such, but this is a Glass Xylophone.

And an even weirder one is to take the stomach of a goat or sheep, and stick some pipes in it, one to blow in, and put some noisemaker reeds in the others. You squueze it with your arm, and some people even like the noises it makes. Some warriors used to use it to charge in to battle with.

Robin