In various versions of Child 10 (The Twa Sisters) the murdered sister becomes all or part of a fiddle or a harp. I seem to recall an American version in which it is a banjo %^).

In the fantasy novel _Picking the Ballad's Bones_ by Elizabeth Scarborough (1991), a gang of folkies trying to save music (with the help of Sir Walter Scott's ghost) from the wicked entertainment industry are guided at every step by a magic banjo, which plays the tunes of songs to which the well-known words are clues.