Lalitsa

The lalitsa is a small wind instrument, like a whistle, used in Greek folk music. It is shaped like a roughly round pot or vessel and is also called the water whistle, the nightingale or the cuckoo.

It was already used in Byzantine times: small hollow clay pots, sometimes with animal-shaped handles, with a mouthpiece, usually half filled with water, which is what makes the sound. Some lalitsas can play several notes (like the ocarina); others have no finger holes and always play the same note (like whistles). Ethnomusicology studies them with the same interest as other instruments.