A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Pipe and Tabor

PIPE and TABOR. The pipe formerly used with the tabor was of the old English pattern, somewhat larger than the modern flageolet, blown at the end, as already described under Flute, and played by the left hand. The tabor was a diminutive drum, without snares, hung by a short string to the waist or left arm, and tapped with a small drumstick. There a woodcut of William Kemp the actor playing pipe and tabor in his Morris dance to Norwich, and another of Tarleton, the Elizabethan jester, in the same attitude. The writer is informed by Mr. William Chappell that Hardman, a music-seller at York, described the instruments to him fifty years ago as above, adding that he had sold them, and that country people still occasionally bought them.

[ W. H. S. ]