Scan 100
Researches into the early history of the violin family, 1883
19 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 90. See the scan on archive.org.
1The kind of rebab which in Europe became known as the rebec represents, so to say, the violin. The player held it before his breast. Its original shape is shown in a three-stringed rebec depicted in a manuscript containing a German translation of the Psalms by Labeo Notker, and dating from the tenth century. The illustration in which it is introduced is a pen-and-ink drawing representing King David playing with a plectrum a seven-stringed lyre, while four attendant musicians accompany him with the harp, cither, dulcimer, and rebec. I have not seen this manuscript, which is said to be preserved in the library of St. Gallen, but H. Abele, in his little book on the violin, gives an illustration of the rebec copied from it. (See Fig. 24). The instrument closely resembles the oval sordino, also called pochette.
3The following allusions to the rebec, occurring in English literature, deserve the attention of the musical student:—
5G. Chaucer ("The Freres Tale;" fourteenth century):—
7Brother, quod he, her woneth an old rebekke,
8That had almost as lefe to lese hire nekke,
9As for to yeve a peny of here good.
11Charles Richardson, who, in his Dictionary of the English Language, quotes the above stanza, remarks: "Tyrwhitt cannot guess how the name rebekke was given to an old woman, unless from the shrillness of the instrument."
13Without assuming to correct the lexicographers, I venture to suggest another explanation. At the time of Chaucer, the rebec used to be ornamented in England with a carved face at its upper termination. This grotesque embellishment was even more common on the cither, or cittern, and there are jests and puns about it in the literature of the time of Shakespeare. For instance:—
15Shakespeare ("Love's Labour Lost," act v., sc. 2.; sixteenth century):—
17Holofernes. I will not be put out of countenance.
18Biron. Because thou hast no face.
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