Gue

The gue is an extinct type of two-stringed bowed lyre or zither from the Shetland Isles. The instrument was described in 1809 by Arthur Edmondston in View of the Ancient and Present State of the Zetland Islands:"Before violins were introduced, the musicians performed on an instrument called a gue, which appears to have had some similarity to the violin, but had only two strings of horse hair, and was played upon in the same manner as a violoncello."The exact details of the gue are unclear, but it possibly resembled extinct bowed lyres such as the Norwegian giga, or the extant Swedish and Estonian talharpa or Finnish jouhikko. However, other ethnomusicologists believe the gue more resembled the Icelandic fiðla, a two-stringed bowed zither. Peter Cooke notes the prevalence of the tautirut bowed zither among the Inuit peoples in areas of Canada influenced by Orkney and Shetland sailors, as possible evidence that the Inuit bowed zither is based on a Shetland model.