David Bennett <><
September 25, 2026
Simply stated, a plectrum is a small object held in the strumming hand used to pluck or strum the strings of a mountain dulcimer, aka dulcimore, rather than using one’s fingers.
Early players used whatever was available to them. Keep in mind a hundred and fifty years ago and even in the early to mid-1900s, in Appalachia, nothing was wasted and for most people unused or unneeded “things” just lying about one’s home were hard to come by.
Plectrums in Appalachia were improvised from readily available material, rather than manufactured picks. In Chapter 6 of Ralph Lee Smith’s Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions, 2nd ed., “Jethro Amburgey (1895–1971)” on page 109 he writes, “Jethro Amburgey was a fine player. Morris says that his father used a long piece of paper, folded over several times, as a strummer.”
The old-time players were looking for materials with particular characteristics — thin, flexible, durable, springy, or smooth — rather than commercially manufactured picks, which would have been hard to come by, even if one had the money to spend on something so frivolous.
With this in mind I decided to compile a list of what old time dulcimer players in Appalachia, from the late 1800s to the 1940s, used to strum their dulcimores. Some of the plectrums I’ll describe were commonly used while others are much less common, but documented. I am leaving out modern plectrums like guitar picks and homemade picks made out of plastic milk jugs and credit cards.
Plectrums are generally made from either natural material (bird quills, wood, horn, bone, leather) or manufactured/recycled materials (corset stays, pocket-watch mainsprings, household scraps, etc.)
Plectrums can also be divided into two other groups: flexible plectrums (quills, leather, perhaps felt or other thin cloth/material) and rigid plectrums (small sticks/cut pieces of wood, reeds, bone, horn, tortoise shell, etc.).
In a letter written by Samuel H. Harley December 28, 1846 to his daughter, he describes a “musical instrument called a Dulcimer, consisting of three strings which are struck with a small stick or plectrum.” He goes on to describe the sound of the instrument as “very sweet and melodious.” (Source: “The Harley Family Letters: Civil War Era Correspondence and its Digital Preservation.” Digital Library Services, University of Virginia Library.)
In L. Allen Smith’s thesis on page 418 he writes of Robert Kilby (1872— 1948) and his dulcimore made in 1915 (D17). Smith interviewed Kilby’s son, O. G. Kilby, in 1975. When Smith asked what his father used “as a pick,” O. G. replied, “Anything he could hear.”
Most of the accounts I have read about from the early 1900s mention strumming with either quill or leather, but they also used other interesting items.
In 1915 William Aspinwall Bradley (1878-1939) wrote in the May issue of Harper’s Monthly Magazine, ‘Song Ballets and Devil’s Ditties’: “the dulcimer — or ‘dulcimore,’ as it is called in the vernacular [is more often plucked], the performer holding it lengthwise in his lap, producing the notes by pressing the string nearest him with a bit of reed held in his left hand, while his right hand sweeps all three with a quill or a piece of not too flexible leather.”
Historical sources suggest that players could be quite opinionated about their choice of plectrums. Howard Brockway (1870–1951), writing about the 1916 Kentucky collecting trip he made with Loraine Wyman (1885–1937), observed in his June 1917 The Art World article, “The Quest of the Lonesome Tunes”: “The dulcimore (accent on the last syllable) is held on the knees and the strings are plucked with a piece of leather or a quill… We found that the dulcimer players were very particular as to the media employed, and that the adherents of the different schools, divided by use of quill or leather, were distinctly temperamental in their allegiance.”
Now on to the various types of plectrums available in back then.
QUILLS:
In the dulcimore world the use of quills is well documented from the 1800s to the 1940s and are still in use today.
The 1911 edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the quill as having been used for plectra on ancient stringed instruments. “QUILL, a term applied to the bare, hard, hollow tube of the feather of a bird, also to the large flight feathers or remiges, and especially to the strong feathers of the goose, swan, or crow used in the making of quill pens…“
Turkey and goose quills I knew about, but I was surprised at the number of mentions of crow quills being used. Apparently, the shaft of the stiff flight feathers of the crow is narrow, strong, and readily shaped allowing the quill to be tapered and shaped into a small pick, providing a flexible but relatively hard quill. Also, a crow feather could be attractive because its dark color making it visually distinctive.
In 1911 in the Sewanee Review, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Jul., 1911), British Ballads in the Cumberland Mountains by Hubert G. Shearin, Professor of English in Transylvania University wrote, “The ‘dulcimore,’ better known to dictionary folk as dulcimer, is an instrument indigenous to this region… it is made of walnut or maple wood and is strung with three strings plucked by a crow-quill held in the right hand.”
In 1925 Josiah Combs (1886-1960), who owned a dulcimore made by Uncle Ed Thomas in 1903, wrote in his dissertation at the University of Paris, Folk-Songs du Midi des Etats-Unis describing a Kentucky dulcimore practice around the early 1900s, saying the three strings were “plucked by a crow-quill.”
Whatever ever the kind of quill used, some players preferred using the thick end of the quill/feather, while others preferred pulling the feather off the quill and vigorously strumming with the thin end of the quill. Charles Seeger (1886-1979) seems to have taken a middle of the road approach.
In The Journal of American Folklore (Jan. – Mar., 1958), Seeger documented that “The quill held in the right hand may be slit an inch or so from the end to make a flexible plectrum”
Seeger also wrote in the same publication, “A turkey, goose or other quill is held in either hand-in the right, to sweep back and forth or in one direction only over all the strings, a little distance above the lower nut; in the left, to press the chanterelle down upon the fretboard so as to intone a melody while the other strings sound as drones.”
I really like strumming with a turkey “primary” feather which I purchased online. Sometimes a turkey hunting buddy from church will give me feathers. The interesting thing is each turkey feather naturally has a unique sound. The sound also depends how you trim the feather which determines how much flexibility you get.
LEATHER:
As mentioned above in 1917 both Brockway and Wyman explicitly reported players using various items for plectrums including leather.
For many people 125 years ago in the back woods leather was readily available, maybe leftover from farm equipment, a saddle or reins. Leather wasn’t merely somebody improvising because they happened to lack a quill.
In January 1917 Josephine McGill (1877-1919) said in an article, The Kentucky Mountain Dulcimer, dulcimores were strummed “using a piece of leather or anything else flexible and durable that he can find…”
In the last year of so I started strumming with a leather plectrum about 50% of the time (it’s a turkey quill the other 50%). The sound is mellow and very pleasing to me. My wife likes it too because it doesn’t distract her when she’s reading or has gone to bed. My leather plectrums come from a leather bookmark kit I bought from Hobby Lobby. Many plectrums can be cut out of one bookmark.
Depending how firm or flexible you like your plectrum, a leather pick can last quite a while. Some days I prefer my older and softer leather picks, which are mellow sounding, and other days I prefer my newer and firmer picks which have more volume.
WOOD:
Like feathers or leather, small pieces of wood or sticks were something readily available to a dulcimore player in a secluded Appalachian cabin. Anything from a dowl to a piece of wood whittled with a pocket knife.
Referring again to Brockway’s 1916 field trip to Kentucky the dulcimore was often strummed with a small stick.
Beech Mountain, North Carolina dulcimer player Nettie Presnell (1918–1997) played with a wooden strummer, usually hickory. Her traditional playing style was plainly connected with her father’s style. You can see Nettie in many online photos and videos strumming with her hickory stick.
A granddaughter of Nettie Presnell’s, Melanie McGrew, was nice enough to send me a couple of Nettie’s plectrums that were clearly made with a jackknife. Melanie told me Nettie’s picks were made of hickory and about three and a half inches long. She also said “You have to sand it down pretty thin in order for it to bend.” Some of Nettie’s strummers were toothpick-like and others were wider but not flexible pieces of wood.
Frances Viola Stines Hicks (1917-1986) came from a rich history of dulcimer tradition. She was granddaughter of Ben Hicks and was a niece of both Nettie Presnell and Windsor Hicks. Sandy Paton recorded Viola playing her dulcimer in the early 1960’s and said of Viola’s playing that she played in the old traditional style, noting with a hardwood stick and plucking it with a thin, flexible sliver of hickory.
In Dr. Lucy Long’s 1995 doctoral dissertation she mentions the use of wood plectrums quite often. The following are just some of the references:
- p. 122 Ralph Lee Smith, historian and dulcimer player, gives a description of what he considers the traditional Appalachian style of playing: “The usual traditional method for playing the dulcimer was to place it on one’s lap and strum across the three or four strings with a finger or thumb, or with a small willow switch, oak splint, or feather.”
- p. 334 Viola Hicks (1917-1986) “She plays it in the old traditional style of the Beech, noting it with a hardwood stick and plucking it with a thin, flexible sliver of hickory.”
- p. 416 “Nettie is the dulcimer player in the family… In her playing, she always uses the traditional techniques, noting with a matchstick or some other stick in the left hand and strumming with a pick usually made of hickory wood in her right… …Nettie s playing style, she proudly asserts, has not changed since her childhood. When asked if people in the past played the dulcimer that way, she responded: “Yeah, this is the way the dulcimer’s supposed to be played. Today a lot of people play it by fretting chords on it, but that’s not really the way the dulcimer’s to be played.”
It seems like everyone I’ve seen strum with a stick holds it perpendicular to the fret board as they strum and not generally at an angle. A friend in our local dulcimer club will often strum with a match stick.
BONE/HORN:
In 1909 Emma Bell Miles (1879-1919) grew up in the Chattanooga/Cumberland region of Tennessee and had considerable familiarity with Appalachian life and music. She was an ethnographer, writer, poet, and artist whose works dealt with the culture of Southern Appalachia… and she owned a dulcimore.
In her June 9, 1908 journal entry Miles describes a dulcimore as “a rough brown-oak instrument with three wire strings, played with a horn plectrum.”
Though the following is more of a literary reference, in November 1909 Harper’s Monthly Magazine published a story by Miles titled, The Dulcimore. The story is set in the Cumberland Plateau region around Tennessee. In this story she wrote of a “handsome young mountain blacksmith” who made a dulcimore for his sweetheart, “…he tossed into her lap a triangular plectrum of smoothed bone. “You pick hit with that,” said he…”
To the best of my knowledge I can’t say that I ever used a bone as a plectrum. Guess I need to get or make one…
TORTOISEHELL:
In an August 17, 1899 letter written by William L. Bates to his wife, he describes hearing “a man playing a dulcimer with a plectrum made of tortoise-shell” while visiting a rural town in Kentucky. He observed that the instrument was “quite different from any other musical instrument I’ve ever heard.” (Source: “The Letters of William Lloyd Bates.” Western Reserve Historical Society.)
Among traditional Appalachian dulcimer players, tortoiseshell appears to have been uncommon as a tortoiseshell pick had to be purchased. In an age when many dulcimer players made do with what was readily at hand, quills and other homemade plectrums were the natural choice.
Tortoiseshell was nevertheless a well-known plectrum material during the 1800s, particularly for instruments such as the mandolin. Despite the name, the material sold as “tortoiseshell” came primarily from the shell of the hawksbill sea turtle rather than from a land tortoise.
Drawbacks were tortoiseshell could chip or split, and a good pick required constant careful shaping and polishing. Eventually, a heavily used pick became too small or worn to be practical.
By the late 1800s and early 1900s, celluloid offered manufacturers an inexpensive material that could imitate the appearance and some of the playing qualities of genuine tortoiseshell.
For the mountain dulcimer, tortoiseshell, whether natural or celluloid, is best regarded as a documented but uncommon plectrum material.
CORSET STAY/STAVE:
According to the Internet the “correct” term is “corset boning.” In this context “bone” is not necessarily the calcified material of which bones are made of. It can be steel or plastic. In corsetry a “bone” is merely the part of a corset that forms its frame and gives it rigidity.
Arthur Dixon (1897-1978) played with a corset stay. Dixon was a retired judge who was born and died in Letcher County, Kentucky. The judge began making dulcimers in 1960, his first instruments were copied from an original dulcimer made by James Edward Thomas. When playing Dixon strummed his dulcimer with one of his wife’s corset stays.
But there is a family with a stronger provenance regarding using corset stays. For much of the following I am indebted to Kendra Ward, a third-generation traditional dulcimore player. Kendra is a well-respected hammered dulcimer and mountain dulcimer player, author, instructor and folklorist who has won many dulcimer contests including at least four times at the Old Fiddlers’ Convention in Galax, Virginia. Her family has dulcimer ties in Ohio and West Virginia.
Kendra’s father, Kenneth Ward (1907-1994), learned to play the dulcimer, or “dulcerine” as they preferred to call it, from his mother Lillie McGhee Ward Swick (1882-1972). They both played in traditional noter style and used both a turkey feather and a metal corset stave as the strummer.
Kendra says the corset stave replaced turkey quills because it produced less pick noise, had more volume, and didn’t wear out like quills. I’ve heard Kendra play many times with a corset stay and I REALLY like the sound she gets from it. Kendra sent me some stays and they are fun to use. Youtube has many videos of Kendra strumming with a corset stay.
In a Hogfiddle blog post from by Pete Ellertsen on March 7, 2006, “Earliest dulcimer in Illinois” he referenced a conversation he had with someone about their grandmother’s dulcimer, “… I can remember the “dulcimer” being a part of the decor of the house. In due course I heard my Mother play the instrument and was fascinated, but unable to play in her style. She used a “noter” and a piece of very springy steel, although she preferred a turkey quill.” I have wondered if this “piece of very springy steel” was a corset stay…
POCKET-WATCH MAINSPRING:
And speaking of springy steel…
General Custer Nicholas (1895–1979) (that’s his real name) was born in West Virginia and died in Ohio. Nicholas presumably started playing the dulcimer in the early 1900s and later made a few of his own. General Custer Nicholas specifically said a No. 18 pocket-watch spring made the “very best picks.”
In an April 1984 letter by Scott Odell, the head conservator from 1978–1993 at the National Museum of American History, says in part regarding plucked dulcimers, “…a short stick or “noter” held in the left hand, an strike across the strings near the bridge with a flexible plectrum made of a goose or turkey quill, or even a piece of watch spring.”
I have obtained pocket-watch springs and experimented with them as plectrums. I’ll just say cutting them to size is the hardest thing for me.
COLLAR STAY
Collar stays could be metal, bone, horn, whalebone, or plastic.
In his 1966 liner notes for “THE MOUNTAIN DULCIMER – How to make it and play it (after a fashion)” by Howard W. Mitchell wrote, “A simple substitute [for a quill] is anything long and flexible, such as a sharpened collar stay…”
My first encounter with using a collar stay come from Ken Longfield when he told me about them at a dulcimer event we were at in Berea, Kentucky about 2016. After Ken told me about them, I obtained a box of plastic collar stays online for a very cheap price. They work very well as plectrums.
CONCLUSION
In this list of plectrums I have pretty much tried them all (with the exception of tortoiseshell and bone), even the pocket watch spring. It has been fun and interesting to try them all. My favorite plectrum for every day strumming is both the stripped turkey quill and leather plectrum. Only very rarely do I use a modern pick, usually if I’m playing somewhere that requires more volume like a nursing home or outside) than my turkey quill or leather pick can produce.
WAIT! WHAT ABOUT FINGERS AND BOWS?
Fingers are not considered plectrums because a plectrum is a separate object held and used to pluck or strike the strings. When you use your bare fingers, the body itself is the playing implement, rather than an external plectrum.
As for the bow… by all accounts, and by definition, a bow is not considered a plectrum because it produces sound by drawing hair across the strings producing friction, rather than by plucking or striking the strings as a plectrum does.
However, since bows are mentioned in various old-time accounts I’ll touch on them a little.
Many of the old accounts do mention the use of bows say their use was “rare.” So, is the use of the bow rare, or is it considered rare because people just by chance didn’t come across them often. My take is bowing was uncommon, but not unheard of.
- 1915 – William Aspinwall Bradley (1878-1939) in the May 1915 issue of Harper’s Monthly Magazine, ‘Song Ballets and Devil’s Ditties’ wrote, “Occasionally the dulcimer — or ‘dulcimore,’ as it is called in the vernacular — is bowed, but more often it is plucked”
- 1920 – In Emily Elizabeth Bayley’s thesis “FOLK-LORE OF THE NORTH CAROLINA MOUNTAINS” she writes the “dulcimore” is “bowed or plucked” and then goes on to describe the much more usual plucked technique with the player usings a reed as the noter, and sweeping the three strings with a quill or leather.
- 1923 – As evidenced by Dr. Henry C. Mercer (1856–1930) bowing seems to have been a bit more common among the Mennonites and Germans of Pennsylvania:
- Mercer interviewed Pennsylvania German zither players who remembered the older players. His findings were presented to the Bucks County Historical Society. A summary of his collection describes seven instruments as plectrum zithers and five as bowed zithers.
- In his paper “The Zithers of the Pennsylvania Germans”, Mercer has a photo a “Kentucky Dulcimore” made by “Mr. E. Thomas of Bath, Kentucky,” and in his description, he writes, “According to Mrs. Luigi Zande of the Pine Mountain Settlement School, Harlan county, Kentucky, Jan. 24, 1922, it is still played by sliding a quill horizontally over the fretted string with the left hand, while striking the instrument with another quill, or a leather plectrum or as shown in the illustration in figure 7, with a bow.”
- 1928 – Aunt Leah Smith of Big Laurel, Harlan County, Kentucky died in 1928. We do know from photographs taken around 1920 that she both plucked/strummed the dulcimore and played with a bow.
- Evelyn K. Wells (1891-1979) who headed for a time the Pine Mountain Settlement School in Kentucky presented an address at Harvard University in 1955 about Appalachian Folksongs. She mentioned, “Aunt Leah Smith who taught us to bow the dulcimer…” According to Wells playing with a bow was a family tradition and Leah Smith was the only one in the entire region to play with a bow.
- Jean Ritchie also wrote that Leah Smith was the only traditional Kentucky dulcimer player she knew of who bowed the instrument. On April 18, 2001 Jean Ritchie wrote on mudcat.org, “If you’re just learning, I’d say hold off on the bowing until you know how to play a bit the regular way. As the fretboard is flat, it’s extremely hard (on listeners, too) to get any satisfactory sounds with a bow. Leah Smith, from Harlan County (her picture’s [sic] in my, THE DULCIMER BOOK) was the only one we ever knew who bowed the instrument, and why she did it is not known now.”
- 1936 – in an article by The Baltimore Sun about the White Top Folk Festival in Virginia published on August 30, 1936 titled “Widening the Folksong Field” it described dulcimers, “Although only the first of the three strings carries the tune, the playing requires special mountain equipment. First of all, there is a turkey-feather quill which is used to “note” the dulcimer. For “picking” a goose quill is pressed into service, while a homemade horsehair strung bow is used when longer notes than the picked variety are desired….”
- 1937 – Allen H. Eaton’s “Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands” tells us, “The mountain dulcimer is played with a plectrum of wood or a goose quill; in very rare instances with a bow.”
- 1958- Charles Seeger wrote, “Only once have I seen the dulcimer played with a bow. The player, in Marion, Virginia in 1936, volunteered that he was “the only one” who played it so. Eaton, too, says this is rare.”
- 1979 – In L. Allen Smith’s thesis he writes of Grayson County, Virginia resident Robert Kilby’s (1874-1945) dulcimore made in 1915 (D17). In this thesis Smith says interviewed Robert Kilby’s son, O.G. Kilby in 1975 who told him his father’s dulcimers all had three strings and he played them with a bow made of cherry and horsehair.
- 1980 – In L. Allen Smith’s “Toward a Reconstruction of the Development of the Appalachian Dulcimer: What the Instruments Suggest” he says J.W. Testerman’s (1867-1940) dulcimer was made by R. Kilby after 1900. Testerman reportedly played hymns with a bow but used a quill for faster numbers.
- Jacob Fredrick Melton (1893-1967) learned to play the dulcimore from his mother, Maggie (1874-1960) who played the dulcimer with a bow. Jacob, according to Ralph Lee Smith, did not play with a bow, “a skill that no subsequent family player acquired.”
- Earl Mullins (1916-1981), born in Lee County, Virginia, played a dulcimer belonging to his mother, Dora Mullins, and prior to that her mother. According to John Rice Irwin in his book, Musical Instruments of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, the crude bow was strung with hair from a mule’s tail… This dulcimer and bow reside in the Museum of Appalachia, in Tennessee.
- Laura Dell Lane (1876-1971) is a third-generation dulcimer player, from Virginia. The Kingsport Times News on January 23, 1955 reported about her playing her grandfather’s dulcimer, “My grandfather, Joseph T. Lane, and my father, Shannon, played, and I learned to play the instrument.” The article also says of this dulcimore, “It hangs on a bedroom wall. Miss Dell takes it down and holds it on her lap or lays it on the sewing machine and “notes on it with a quill” in the left hand or draws a violin bow across the two steel guitar strings…”
- Dulcimore playing Samuel Newton Johnston (1866-1957) was born and died in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. Gerry Milnes wrote in Play of a Fiddle: Traditional Music, Dance, and Folklore in West Virginia, that Johnston’s dulcimer playing daughter, Dena Johnston Knicely (1911-1993), said when playing the dulcimer that her father used a feather to play dance tunes, but used a bow with the dulcimer’s headstock propped on a window sill to play hymns.
The End
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https://heritagedulcimers.wordpress.com/today-in-mountain-dulcimer-history/
- “His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe.” Genesis 4:21
- “Speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord” Ephesians 5:19
- “Praise Him with stringed instruments…” Psalm 150:4
- “Then I will go to the altar of God, To God my exceeding joy; And upon the lyre I shall praise You, O God, my God.” Psalm 43:4
