The tiompán (Irish), tiompan (Scottish Gaelic), or timpan (Welsh) was a stringed musical instrument[1] used by musicians in medieval Ireland and Britain.
These sources also make references to the tips and sides of the fingers being used on the strings, likely to stop them to produce higher notes.
The adjective "timpánach" referred to a performer on the instrument but is also recorded in one instance in the Dánta Grádha as describing a cruit.
In modern Irish traditional music, the word tiompan was used by Derek Bell, after Francis William Galpin's theories, to refer to the hammered dulcimer.
Other hypothesised reproductions resemble the Welsh Crwth, and the ancient Greek and Roman Pandura.