While thumbing through an old (1957) dictionary I happened upon an illustrated entry for "ukulele". The illustration shows a fellow playing the uke lap-style, as one would play an Appalachian dulcimer, Dobro, or Weisenborn guitar. And it shows him fretting, not using a slide.

I have never heard of playing a uke in that manner. I immediately went to Google and did searches for "lap style ukulele" and "lap-style ukulele" (including quotes) and got no results. What gives? Surely an illustrator working on a major dictionary wouldn't just guess at how the instrument was held.

I've come up with a few guesses, though I have no evidence to support any of them:

1) The uke was commonly played lap-style at some point in the past but, over the last fifty years, all references to anyone doing so have disappeared from human knowledge.

2) The illustrator was confused. He knew that Hawaiian music as played on Weisenborns, Nationals and Dobros was done lap-style so he assumed ukes were played the same way.

3) Some players who originally learned to play lap-style slide on the above-mentioned slide instruments naturally gravitated toward lap-style when they took up the uke. Most of us who play lap-style slide have graduated to it after first learning to play a regular guitar held in the conventional manner. But Hawaii had such a strong slide tradition that some players may have started out playing lap-style without ever learning to hold a guitar "correctly". It just so happened that the illustrator saw someone (or a photograph of someone) playing in that style.

I'm leaning toward number three as the most logical scenario.

However, that discounts the fact that 1957, when the dictionary was published, was the height of Arthur Godfrey's career and he certainly didn't play the uke lap-style. Perhaps the illustrator didn't have a television. One couldn't tell how Mr. Godfrey was holding his instrument on the radio.