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Scan 195
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
2 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 181. See the scan on archive.org.
1various peoples, but there is no trace of these being known to the ancient Britons, whose musical instruments of the bow kind appear to have been, without exception, imported, or copied from those of other nations. With regard to the violin in its present shape, not only is there no evidence to support the conjecture which Dr. Schebek advances, but such proof of its presence as does exist strengthens a directly opposite opinion. As early as the reign of King Stephen there were dulcimers, lyres, and lutes; but there is no trace of bowed instruments except the crwth or crouth, which appears, a long time before Stephen's reign, at the court of a Welsh king, and which will be referred to presently. It is only in illuminated manuscripts we find illustrations of violin types which prove their existence contemporaneously with the three mentioned. One of the Cotton manuscripts, supposed to have been written about the beginning of the eleventh century, contains a delineation of all the musical instruments then in use in Britain. Among these is the figure of a young man playing upon a bowed instrument of a very early kind, having four strings attached to a tail-piece, two circular sound holes on each side of the latter, and a flat head with representations upon it of pegs holding the strings. The instrument is being played at the shoulder almost in the approved manner, except that the performer allows the neck to rest in the fork formed by his left thumb and fore finger, and upon the fleshy part at the root of the thumb, an exceedingly bad habit, which appears to have come down from very early times. The instrument is pear-shaped, and the bow, rudely represented, is, judging by its proportion to the
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