Tiompan

[Dick Glasgow]

Derek Bell of the Chieftains was responsible for bringing the name of this ancient Irish Instrument back into common usage in Ireland when he introduced a Hammered Dulcimer into the line up, calling it a Tiompan.

But was it a Hammered Dulcimer after all ...........................

Derek Bell as dulcimer player

The hammered dulcimer is well documented as having been played in Ireland in the eighteenth century and is even mentioned by James Joyce as an instrument he heard being played in the street. Derek Bell introduced a small cimbalom (a hammered dulcimer from Central and Eastern Europe), which he christened tiompan after the medieval Irish instrument.

Derek Bell

Tiompán (or hammered dulcimer)

There are only vague descriptions of this ancient instrument.
There are also many opposing theories on what the tiompán actually was, from a drum to a stringed instrument.
An old Gaelic dictionary that defines it as:

tiompán
nm. g.v. -ain; pl.+an, cymbal, tabor

What Derek calls a tiompán is a modern day hammered dulcimer.

The dulcimer is most likely the modern equivalent to the tiompán.

Thanks to Joseph Mulvanerty for the above tiompán information.

Derek Bell

In spite of the lack of supporting iconographical evidence Derek Bell evidently finds Galpin's view convincing:

"A perusal of this old literature suggests that the Timpan... was originally a lyre with only three strings, later becoming a psaltery, later still in some parts it was a bowed psaltery... and only finally is it believed to have become a hammered dulcimer, and psaltery and dulcimer rolled into one. This is what Dr. Apel and many Scottish Irish (sic) musicologists believe.., what we cannot prove for certain is how it was played, for the Irish to slide off a string... to pluck with nail or plectrum like a psaltery or again like a harp, and to hammer are all the same word! ...

"My 'timpan' as Buckley says on my sole record sleeve, 'an educated guess'. I wanted to bring back the metal, brass bronze-string sound into Irish music again in an ethnic way, without resorting to foreign instruments like guitars and bouzoukis and banjos, which are near but not quite right"(69).

In spite of his declared concern for an ethnic Irish sound, the instrument which Derek Bell plays is identified by John Teall as having been built by a Hungarian as a cimbalom (86) (figs.214, 215); it is nevertheless introduced as a timpán, in concert apparently, and, for instance, in Alun Owen's notes to the fine LP Chieftains 5:

"The Timpán Reel

Controversies and Misunderstandings

The ancient Irish instrument

the tiompan, was not a hammered dulcimer despite the use of this name by Derek Bell of the Chieftans for his dulcimer and the similarity of name to the timpan, which was a hammered dulcimer in Western Europe in the 17th cent.

IRTrad

There was also an instrument called the "timpan" or "tiompan." It's identity is uncertain, but we know it was a stringed instrument with 3 to 8 strings, played with a bow, plectrum, or fingers.

pbm.com

The corn was a metallic horn; the drum, or tiompan, was a tabor;

Celtic Twilight

In fact, according to Flood, it referred to the music of an ancient Irish harplike instrument, the "tiompan" or timpan. The timpan was also popular in England in the 15th and 16th centurys, and the words "dump" and "thump," which mean to "pluck" and "strike" the timpan entered the English language, originally in connection with the instrument. Thus Shakespeare's reference to a "merry dump" is explained as descriptive of a technique of playing or a type of sharp musical attack....

Fiddler's Companion