Ah yes, Mr Radish, I meant to give up after invoking Cicero and/or St Augustine but came back with just a little extremely basic musical information in the hope of sending WAV off in quest for knowledge and enlightenment. Waste of time, obviously. Thought I'd point out the bleedin' obvious: that crwths are not exclusively Welsh any more than leeks and daffodils are and that the origins of pipes are as far from being exclusively Caledonian as oats and fried Mars bars are wholly tartan-clad.

The first time somebody wondered if they could get a tune out of a disembowelled goat sure as hell didn't happen in Inverness, It would have occurred many, many centuries (if not millennia) earlier in the Middle East, the Far East or North / sub-Saharan Africa where human development was infinitely more advanced than on these islands. I know WAV doesn't like this obvious logic, but . . . tough.

To revert to the original question, I cannot for the life of me see why England needs a "national" instrument. Smacks of particularly nasty chauvinism to me. I did nowever give an answer far too many column miles above that the only (chromatic) instrument wholly invented in England was the English concertina, an irrelevant fact in musical terms as it can and is (in common with many another) used to perform music from many another culture. This is what musicians do, WAV. It's one of the ways in which art, and international understanding, grows. But that is anathema to you, isn't it?