Scan 40
Researches into the early history of the violin family, 1883
11 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 30. See the scan on archive.org.
1painting on which this lyre occurs is supposed by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, and by some other Egyptologists, to represent Jews bringing tribute to the Pharaoh Osirtasen I., at the time of Joseph; while other scholars assert that these strangers, bearded and peculiarly dressed, are meant for Jebusites, who lived in Jerusalem with the Hebrews, by whom they had been subdued. At any rate, it hardly admits of a doubt that the Hebrews, about the time of King David, also possessed this species of lyre, carried horizontally by the player, considering that it is to be found represented on the Assyrian monuments as well as on those of the Egyptians and other nations of antiquity. The circumstance of its being generally more simple and plain than the upright lyre, which the player held before him in a perpendicular direction, rather indicates that it is the older kind; and this conjecture is, as we shall presently see, in conformity with popular tradition. However, the illustration does not exactly exhibit the earliest form of the body of the lyre, since the back must have been oval, if it consisted of the shell of a tortoise. At all events, the remarkable resemblance suggests that the old crwth was the imported oriental lyre; and this conjecture is further supported by the following statements referring to the Irish cruít and the English crowd.
3In a learned work by Edward Lhuyd on the comparative etymology of the early languages of Great Britain, published at Oxford in 1707, we find, under the heading Cithara (Greek): "Welsh, telyn; krúth, a croud; Cornish, kroud, a fiddle, a violin, and telein (obsolete), a harp; Irish, kruith, clairseax."
5In Edward Lhuyd's Irish-English Dictionary are given the following definitions: "Cruit, a bunch on the back; cruiteog, a woman crowder, or that playeth on the violin; cruith, a croud, a violin; cruitin, crook-backed; cruiteneach, crump-shouldered; cruitive, a crowder."
7Some scholars make a distinction in the spelling, adopting cruít for a fiddle and cruith for a harp; others maintain that cruít designates any stringed instrument without exception.
9Edward Bunting, in his dissertation on the Irish harp, prefaceing his "Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland," one of two readings
10Edward Bunting, in his dissertation on the Irish harp, prefacing his "Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland," one of two readings
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