PHOTO:  Corn Stalk Fiddle, 1899. L. 30 cm, Diam. 2 cm From The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 1889 via the Metropolitan Museum Of Art

"During the summer, the children would often make cornstalk fiddles.  The pulp would be cleaned out with a length of stalk and the remaining stringly fibers were played with a stick.  It was impossible to get any real music out of one of those contraptions, of course, but everybody tried, including Roy [Acuff]."  - Elizabeth Schlappi, Roy Acuff: The Smoky Mountain Boy.

"Every night I would come home and bring me some corn stalks and I would go in the back room and rub them together and make music and the other children would dance while I would play the corn stalk fiddle and sing"  -Big Bill Broonzy, from an interview with Alan Lomax.

How to Make a Cornstalk Fiddle (1886)

Find a good straight corn-stalk, and with your jackknife cut four slits from joint to joint, as seen in the upper figure. Then from a bit of wood cut a bridge, as shown just below. With the point of the knife lift the three strings and insert the bridge. Then carefully raise the bridge to its upright position, spread the strings until they rest in the grooves cut in the bridge for that purpose, and put a similar bridge at the other end. Make the bow in the same manner, of a smaller section of a stalk, and the instrument is complete. I have never heard a very decided tune played on this fiddle, but perhaps some of my readers may be able to get music from this simple little instrument.

Extra:  The Apache Fiddle Tradition video, featuring an instrument very similar to the cornstalk fiddle.