Crwth
The crwth ( , ), also called a crowd or rote or crotta, is a bowed lyre, a type of stringed instrument, associated particularly with Welsh music, now archaic but once widely played in Europe. Four historical examples have survived and are to be found in St Fagans National Museum of History (Cardiff); National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth); Warrington Museum & Art Gallery; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (US). Origin of the name The name is Welsh, derived from a Proto-Celtic noun *- ("round object") which refers to a swelling or bulging out, a pregnant appearance or a protuberance, and it is speculated that it came to be used for the instrument because of its bulging shape. Other Celtic words for violin also have meanings referring to rounded appearances. In Gaelic, for example, "" can mean "hump" or "hunch" as well as harp or violin. Like several other English loanwords from Welsh, the name is one of the few words in the English language in which the letter W is used as a vowel. The traditional English name is crowd (or rote), and the variants , and are little-used today. In Medieval Latin it is called the chorus