Mongolia

One legend credits the invention of the Morin Khuur, a traditional Mongolian bowed instrument, to a boy named Suhe – a shepherd boy with his white horse. After a wicked lord slew the boy’s prized white horse, the horse’s spirit came to Suhe in a dream and instructed him to make an instrument from the horse’s body, so the two could still be together and neither would be lonely. The first Morin Khuur was assembled, with horse bones as its neck, horsehair strings, horse skin covering its wooden sound box, and its scroll carved into the shape of a horse head.