And of course the diddley-bow brings to mind Bo Diddley with his rectangular guitar and his often primitive-sounding songs. Who can doubt he was harking back to a cigar-box model? Probably began on one. Certainly his prominence in midcentury rock 'n roll must be the farthest the CBG ever traveled ... at least in inspiration. Got his name that way too.
I have been told that the original diddley-bow was a bowed wire from a store-bought broom that was fastened to a door, bowed with a hank of horse hair, and varied in pitch by stepping on a board fastened to the lower end. Ancestor of all stretch-one-string instruments like the Marxophone, I guess. (Soprano analog to the washtub bass too.)
Cigar box fiddles and banjos have been known. Biscuit tins and even frying pans were used in the same way. The much-legended frying-pan banjo (a bunch of us pickers wanted to build one in the 1950s, but the technical problems and lack of time always kept us from doing it) turns out to be very tiny-sounding, though ... no resonance. Picturesque all the same.
And oops, guess that constitutes thread drift. Sorry.