FAIRHOPE, Ala. — The music may have started a long time ago on “the misty Highlands,” traveled across the ocean and spread through the Appalachian mountains during the Scottish and Irish immigration of the 17th and 18th centuries, but it has been going strong every Thursday morning in Fairhope for the past 13 years.

“We have more than 30 regulars who show up every week,” said Jim Hays, one of the group’s founders, during a coffee break Thursday at the regular meeting of the Jubilee Pickers. “These are people, many without any musical backgrounds, just getting together making music and having fun.”

This week drew a small group of “only” 21 people, said Stan Hodges, who started the weekly meeting after a class he taught on how to build and play the mountain dulcimer.

“We’ve met every week since 1994,” he said. “Many have been here since the beginning.”

On Thursday, the group played tunes like “White Mountain Rag,” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” on about 10 dulcimers, two fiddles, several harmonicas, a guitar, a harp made by Hodges for one of the players, percussion instruments, a hammered dulcimer, and a homemade “bucket bass.”

“Let’s start with ‘Scotland the Brave,’” one of the players said after the break.

Then, the familiar haunting melody often heard on bagpipes filled the ballroom at Homestead Village, a senior citizens community in Fairhope.

“Everyone goes around the circle and gets to say a song they want to play,” Hays said. “Then, after that’s done, we just jam some.”

Hodges said most of the group are retired people who live in the area, but there are also a number of snowbirds who come back with their instruments each year.

“This give us all something to do and stay in touch,” he said. “We are mainly retired folks who wouldn’t have contact with each other without something like this. We’ve become old friends.”

Hodges said the group grew out of his dulcimer class, that Hays now teaches, but soon new players with other instruments began joining in.

They sometimes take their act on the road.

“We play all over,” he said. “We call them gigs.”

He said the Jubilee Pickers play at churches and also go into schools with instruments to show students the dulcimer and let them know a little of its history.

“It’s something that’s coming back,” said Thetta Williams, of the instrument closely identified with traditional Appalachian music.

Williams said she and her husband of 60 years, Charlie, travel almost 50 miles from near Mobile to come to the group every week.

While she talked, Charlie asked the “bucket bass” player, Gayle Decker, to dance.

“No, we’ve never been jealous of each other,” she said, watching her husband bust some old time moves. “After we left here last week, we went to a senior center in Daphne and he got some of the ladies dancing there, even if they were in wheelchairs.”

The word “dulcimer” is thought to have been derived from the Greek word “dulce” (sweet) and the Latin word “melos” (song), Anthony Huvard states on his Web site.

“It is believed to have evolved from a northern European instrument, the German ‘scheitholt,’ which like the Appalachian dulcimer is played with a bow and plucked or strummed as well,” his Web site states. “It is believed that this scheitholt made it to Appalachia toward the end of the 18th century.”

One of the most famous traditional American rural mountain tunes is “Old Joe Clark.”

Clark was a historical figure in the late 19th century, who owned a country store and ran a moonshine still in Kentucky, according to some sources.

The song itself is a legendary fiddle tune that eventually developed dozen of lyrics, each starting with Clark’s name, such as: “Old Joe Clark had a yellow cat/She would neither sing nor pray/Stuck her head in a buttermilk jar/And washed her sins away.”

Hays said that Clark was rumored to have said in the 1880s before he died perhaps the definitive word about the beauty and simplicity of the mountain dulcimer.

“There ain’t no notes on a dulcimer, you just play it.”

The Jubilee Pickers group of dulcimers, stringed instruments and more meets every Thursday from 9 a.m. to noon at Homestead Village, 924 Plantation Blvd. in Fairhope. Anyone interested in playing, listening singing along is welcome. For more information, call Jim or Fay Hays at 990-9114.