DUKINFIELD, a municipal borough of Cheshire, England, within the parliamentary borough of Stalybridge, 6 m. E. of Manchester. Pop. (1901) 18,929. It lies in the densely populated district in the north-east of the county, between Stalybridge and Ashton-under-Lyne, and is served by the London & North Western and Great Central railways. There are extensive collieries, and the other industries include cotton manufactures, calico-printing, hat-making, iron-founding, engineering and the manufacture of firebricks and tiles. A portion remains of the old timbered Dukinfield Hall, in the chapel of which Samuel Eaton (d. 1665) taught the first congregational church in the north of England. The chapel, much enlarged, is still used by this denomination. The borough, incorporated in 1899, is under a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 1405 acres.
DULCIGNO (Servian, Ultsin, Turk. Olgun), a seaport of Montenegro, on the Adriatic Sea, 8 m. W. of the Albanian frontier. Pop. (1900) about 5000. Shut in by hills and forests, and built partly on a promontory overlooking its bay, partly along the shore, Dulcigno is the prettiest of Montenegrin towns. Its narrow crooked lanes, however, with its bazaars, mosques, minarets and veiled women, give to its picturesqueness a decidedly Turkish air. The old quarter, on the promontory, is walled, and has a medieval castle, once of great strength. Turks form the bulk of the inhabitants, although their numbers decreased steadily after 1880, when the population numbered about 8000. Albanians and Italians are fairly numerous. Dulcigno has a Roman Catholic cathedral and an ancient Latin church. The Austrian Lloyd steamers call at intervals, and some shipbuilding and fishing are carried on; but the harbour lacks shelter and is liable to deposits of silt.
To the Romans, who captured it in 167 B.C., Dulcigno was known as Ulcinium or Olcinium; in the middle ages it was a noted haunt of pirates; in the 17th century it was the residence of Sabbatai Zebi (d. 1676), a Jew who declared himself to be the Messiah but afterwards embraced Islam. In 1718 Dulcigno was the scene of a great Venetian defeat. It belonged to the Turks until 1880, when its cession, according to the terms of the treaty of Berlin (1878), was enforced by the “Dulcigno demonstration,” in which the fleets of Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Russia took part.
DULCIMER (Fr. tympanon; Ger. Hackbrett, Cymbal; Ital. cembalo, timpanon or salterio tedesco), the prototype of the pianoforte, an instrument consisting of a horizontal sound-chest over which are stretched a varying number of wire strings set in vibration by strokes of little sticks or hammers. The dulcimer differed from the psalterium or psaltery chiefly in the manner of playing, the latter having the strings plucked by means of fingers or plectrum. The shape of the dulcimer is a trapeze or truncated triangle, having the bass strings stretched parallel with the base, which measures from 3 to 4 ft.; the strings decrease gradually in length, the shortest measuring from about 18 to 24 in. at the truncated apex. The sound-board has one or two rose sound-holes; the strings are attached on one side to hitch pins and at the other to the larger tuning pins firmly fixed in the wrest plank. The strings of fine brass or iron wire are in groups of two to five unisons to each note; the vibrating lengths of the strings are determined by means of two bridges. The dulcimer is placed upon a table in front of the performer, who strikes the strings with a little hammer mounted on a metal rod and covered on one side with hard and on the other with soft leather for forte and piano effects. The compass, now chromatic throughout, varies according to the size of the instrument; the large cymbalom of the Hungarian gipsies has a range of four chromatic octaves,
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The origin of the dulcimer is remote, and must be sought in the East. In the bas-reliefs from Kuyunjik, now in the British Museum, are to be seen musicians playing on dulcimers of ten strings with long sticks curved at the ends, and damping the strings with their hands. This is the pisantir of the days of Nebuchadrezzar, translated “psaltery” in Dan. iii. 5, &c., and rendered “psalterion” in the Septuagint, a confusion which has given rise to many misconceptions.[1] In the Septuagint no less than four different instruments are rendered psalterion (from Gr. ψάλλω, pluck, pull), i.e. ugab, nebel, pisantir and toph, two stringed, one wind and one percussion. The use of the word in Greek for a musical instrument is not recorded before the 4th century B.C. The modern santir of the Persians, almost identical with the German hackbrett, has a compass from
