In the Cajun lexicon, the word “envie” (pronounced ahn-vee) means a yearning or longing for something, most generally, food —a gumbo when the first chill of fall occurs, or when shrimp and crawfish appear on restaurant billboards in the spring, or perhaps all year taste buds yearn for boudin. However, the yearning can also be a desire for a new car, a new dress or suit, a set of black iron pots in which to stir up a good gumbo, any material object.
I seldom get envies for objects beyond my budget, but on our last travel adventure to Kentucky, I passed a shop in the central shopping district of Berea, Kentucky and saw several dulcimers displayed in the window of a master craftsman and was seized by a sudden envie for the instrument, although I know zilch about playing a stringed instrument. A clarinet and a recorder lurk in my musical background, but I no longer have enough breath to play either wind instrument.
The dulcimer that attracted me was constructed of tulip poplar wood, and I went into the shop to get a closer look. Inside, I kept circling it before finally daring to touch it and pluck a few strings.
“Think of reading poetry while plucking the strings of this Appalachian delight,” I told my friend Vickie who had accompanied me into the shop. She was busy examining wooden salad bowls that might be filled with food to satisfy her envie for lettuce and other “grass” that I call salad ingredients.
“Mmm,” she said. “You don’t know one thing about string instruments. Think of that $400 as an impulse buy.”
I began to bouday (Cajun French for “sulk” and pronounced boo-day). “But those three or four strings could add so much drama to poetry readings.”
“You don’t need any more drama in your life,” she quipped and went back to her salad bowls.
Her indifference to an object for which I had an overwhelming envie only fanned my interest in the unattainable, and I spent an hour talking to the sales clerk who played “Frere Jacques” for me on the handsome instrument. I sang along with the tune and looked at my friend who had become restless and turned her head in an apparent veto of the dulcimer. I finally decided I could live without a dulcimer and left my envie on the table holding my desire.
Dulcimers are Appalachian instruments that first appeared in the early 19th century among Scots-Irish immigrants (maybe one of my Scots Greenlaw ancestors who settled in Virginia developed an envie for a dulcimer and played one). However, like many histories of objects, the history of the Appalachian dulcimer is purely speculative. An Appalachian, Charles Maxson of West Virginia, says that early settlers in Appalachia were incapable of constructing a complicated violin because they didn’t have time or tools to do so, but they could build dulcimers, so the instrument appeared in the homes of those Appalachians who loved to create music in the evenings.
Dulcimers are usually made of walnut, oak, cherry, and apple, but the one for which I had an envie was made of tulip poplar, a lighter wood. The craftsman who owned the shop I visited used mostly salvaged wood to create his instruments, and the clerk told me that my envie might have been for an instrument made of wood 200 years old. The most popular forms of dulcimer are those shaped like ellipses, teardrops, and hourglasses. The picture on a brochure of Berea (above) features these beautifully-shaped instruments.
I also like that dulcimers are similar to Middle Eastern string instruments, and while suffering from my envie I envisioned reading verses from my most recent book of poetry about Persia, The Ultimate Pursuit.
Ultimately, a $400 envie is a luxury item in my budget, and I don’t have any poetry readings scheduled this year, not to mention that I’d probably never advance in my musical evenings beyond a rendition of “Frere Jacques,” so…
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