The invention is served complete, thieving context included. The infant Hermes, having hidden Apollo’s stolen kine, finds his material grazing: “before the cave he found a tortoise browsing” [The Library (Bibliotheca), BOOK III, ch. X]. He “strung the shell with chords made from the kine he had sacrificed” — dead shell, stolen strings — and the new thing is instantly currency: “when Apollo heard the lyre, he gave the kine in exchange for it” [ibid.]. Frazer’s notes on the page keep the variants honest: in the Homeric Hymn “the invention of the lyre by Hermes precedes his theft of the cattle”, and his long summary of Sophocles’ satyr-play gives the nursery view — the confined baby’s toy made from a dead beast, “his only balm of grief, his comforter” [ibid., editor’s note]. Thompson’s row carries a Finnish parallel our wiring has not reached: “Kalevala rune 40 (from bones of a pike)” — his words, from the apparatus — another instrument strung on another carcass. Two harps from two dead creatures, one Greek and wired, one Finnish and waiting: the lyre begins as salvage, and the god of exchange invents it as loot.