Books › Chats on violins, 1905 › scan 36
Scan 36
Chats on violins, 1905
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1chronicles giving as reward a present each to three Bards:
2 To the first: a harp.
3 To the second: a crouth.
4 To the third: a cornemuse (bagpipe).
5 I cannot say of the crouth that it was tucked away under the cloaks of the minstrels, for it does not look a tuckable contrivance. There is a square, gauche expression about it that suggests angular dancing and hard rhymes. Unconsciously I have always classified it as an instrument for mounted minstrels who must possess square faces, and ride on nice, fat, hard horses. Their dress I am sure would be of leather, and they would proceed from house to house, sedately and heavily with the crouth firmly strapped on their backs.
6 Neither great abuse nor great praise seems to have been its lot; it never even reached the rebec's glorious dispraise. It seems to have been just the crouth, a square person with a very unyielding face: the Puritan of the Violin family.
7 I think it must have moved in rather better circles than the rebec, for only once in the time of Henry VIII. do I find it in any sort of trouble. Even then it is nothing
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