Against the old ones

When you make something this rare, you are always working against the few that survived. I keep the shapes of the old instruments in my head — the one kept in the museum at Aberystwyth among them, which has a great knot sitting right in it. That always steadies me: even the ones we treasure were made from real wood, with its faults, by a person at a bench. This one is finished now — carried out into the garden and stood in the sun to be looked at properly, the yoke carved, the six strings on, the bow beside it. It is new-made, and it already belongs to something a thousand years old.