England’s contribution to this story is the riddle drum — a frame drum so close to the Irish bodhrán that some researchers consider them effectively the same instrument under different names. Documented in Dorset and Wiltshire by folklorist Peter Kennedy in the 1950s, the riddle drum shares the bodhrán’s likely origin: a riddle, the large sieve used to separate grain from chaff, with the wire mesh swapped for stretched skin. In Cornwall, the same instrument goes by its own name — the crowdy-crawn. See the Riddle Drum / Crowdy-Crawn page below.