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Scan 196
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 182. See the scan on archive.org.
1figure of the performer, not much under the length of our present one, and not unlike it in shape if it be screwed up tightly until the arching is reversed. This performer is taking part in a concert at which a figure representing King David also assists, sitting in the middle and playing upon a harp. In one of the Bodleian manuscripts, which dates about the time of Henry II., is a figure of a youth playing upon an instrument of an oval form, having a neck attached to it, a tail-piece, and a head for the pegs. The bow of this instrument is very elegant for the period, and, judging from the figure, is quite as long as a modern Tourte. It even appears to have a nut, if not a screw, for tightening the hair, but the illustration is not quite clear in that respect. This instrument has five strings. Another of the five-stringed sort appears in a manuscript written in the reign of Henry III., and a four-stringed one, having sound holes more elongated, wider, and placed near the middle of the instrument, a tail-piece and head, is supposed to have been drawn by the historian Matthew Paris, in a manuscript by him, which is in the Cotton collection. The tail-piece in this last is quite modern in shape.
3None of these instruments have bridges, whether from inattention on the part of the artist or not cannot, of course, be said, but there is in another manuscript in the same collection a small figure of a boy playing with a bow upon a curiously-curved two-stringed instrument which has a bridge. This manuscript is supposed to have been written about the beginning of the eleventh century. Among the ornaments on the outside of St. John's Church, Cirencester, there is the
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