Psalteries

When I was at Llancaiach Fawr the other day, the young man taking the part of the music master played a bowed psaltery for us as he explained about his job of providing music in the house and teaching the daughters of the Colonel. It's a fascinating instrument, triangular, with each string running a bit further up the middle of the instrument to the top, and each string tuned to a single note. It sounds, and looks, wonderfully medieval. I had a vision of myself, sitting on camp when I was tired of spinning, making music by the fire.
When I got home, I did a little research, and found to my disappointment that the bowed psaltery was invented by a German school teacher in 1890.
However, down in the kitchen of the manor house, they had another sort of psaltery on display. This one was known as a "pig's snout" psaltery, and the strings were plucked with a feather or the fingers - and that one really was medieval. There were pictures from medieval manuscripts of people playing them. I had a listen to one being played on YouTube, and it sounds very like a harp - in fact, I saw it referred to as a lap harp as I looked further.
This looked far more promising.
Then I started looking at websites for musical instrument makers. Psalteries count as folk music instruments, and seem to be quite popular in the United States. They also start at a rock bottom price of around £80, plus the postage and packing from the States, which is quite high.
I am not a musician. One of the things that attracted me to the idea of a bowed psaltery is that everyone said that it was extremely easy to play. There is no point in me spending out in excess of £100 for something which will look nice on the shelf, but which I will not be able to get the best use out of as an instrument.
However, similar instruments are marketed as toys. Obviously, they don't produce the same quality of sound, but all I want is something to plunk away at by the campfire - and some of the toy psalteries come with tunes printed out on a piece of paper that you push under the strings, and you follow the dots to make the tune.
I can do that.
It should arrive next week.