[Illustration: FIG. 25.――CITHARA. From a MS. of the 9th century, formerly in the monastery of St. Blasius in the Black Forest.] The _cithara_ here illustrated (Fig. 25) is evidently an improvement upon the triangular psalterium (Fig. 26), because it has a sort of small sound-board at the top. Scarcely better, with regard to acoustics, appears to have been the instrument designated as _nablum_, which is engraved (Fig. 27) from a manuscript of the ninth century at Angers. [Illustration: FIG. 26.――KING PLAYING PSALTERY. After an engraving in N. X. Willemin’s _Monuments Français Inédits_, Vol. I., pl. 19, taken from _Hortus Deliciarum_, a MS. of the 12th century.] [Illustration: FIG. 27.――NABLUM. From a 9th century MS. at Angers.] [Illustration: FIG. 28.――Female playing a species of CITOLE. From a 9th century MS. formerly in the monastery of St. Blasius, in the Black Forest.] A small psalterium with strings placed over a sound-board was apparently the prototype of the _citole_, a kind of dulcimer which was played with the fingers (Fig. 28). The names were not only often vaguely applied by the mediæval writers, but they changed also in almost every century. The psalterium, or psalterion (Italian _salterio_, English _psaltery_), of the fourteenth century and later had the trapezium shape of the dulcimer. [Illustration: FIG. 29.――HARP. From a 9th century MS. formerly in the monastery of St. Blasius in the Black Forest.]