Having suddenly remembered the box with my collection of Jew’s harps, I went to the study to fetch it. Without a thought, I started playing one of them after another. As ever, it was an enormous joy hearing myself play. A modern man that I am, I quickly put all the Jew’s harps back in the box and went to my computer to search the World Wide Web. I found a whole bunch of websites about it in no time. Sadly, very little seems to be known about the origin and spread of the instrument. But I was delighted by a site that listed its name in quite a number of languages. In England it is apparently known as gewgaw; in Germany as Maulttrommel; in Japan as koukin; in Russia as vargan; in Siberia as khomus; in the Philippines as kumbing or kubing; in Italy as scaccia pensieri; in Norway as munharpa or munharpe; in France as guimbarde; and in Bali as genggong. Wow! According to the same source, there are over a thousand names for the instrument. I know some of those, of course. In some parts of former Yugoslavia, for instance, it is known as drombulje. And in Sicily it is known as maranzano. Anyhow, the profusion of names for the Jew’s harp gave me an unexpected boost, and I returned to the box. Hey, I am playing more than a thousand instruments at a time!

Addendum (September 5, 2018)

Pray, what is the origin of the term drombulje, which is known across much of former Yugoslavia? It has taken me years to figure it out, but the term is Hungarian to boot. In Hungarian, Jew’s harp is called doromb. And the noun comes from the verb dorombol, which means “to purr.” Goodness gracious! I started playing this wonderful instrument in my youth, but it has taken me more than a half of an entire century to figure out the origin of its name in my own language. Hungarian, the secret language of the Balkans!