Scan 49
Researches into the early history of the violin family, 1883
31 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 39. See the scan on archive.org.
1(The CROWD.
3(Strike up, musicians and drummers!
4Three hundred harps and trumpets,
5Citola, crowd, fiddle, and psaltery,
6Shalms, guitars, and kettle-drums,
7Organs, also cymbals,
8Flutes and bagpipe.)
10In the translation alluded to, some of the instruments are incorrectly rendered, which has been altered here. The cythol may possibly be the cither instead of the little instrument of the dulcimer kind which was called the citola. The circumstance that the fiddle (fylh) is mentioned besides the crowd rather suggests that the latter was at that time still, in shape and construction, similar to the Welsh crwth.
12In the following extract from the "Houlate" (fifteenth century), the term croude designates probably the fiddle, since the latter instrument is not mentioned in the comprehensive list of the various sound-producing means used by the minstrels:—
14All thus our ladye thai lofe, with lytting and lift,
15 Menstralis and musicians, mo than I mene may:
16The psaltry, the citholis, the soft atharift,
17 The croude and the monycordis, the gythornis gay,
18The rote and the recordour, the ribus, the rift,
19 The trump and the taburn, the tympane, but tray;
20The lilt-pype and the lute, the cithill and fift,
21 The dulsate and the dulsacordis, the shalm of affray;
22The amyable organis usit full oft;
23 Clarions loud knellis,
24Portatibis and bellis,
25 Cymbaellonis in the cellis
26That soundis so soft.
28W. Dauney, who has endeavoured to explain the antiquated Scotch instruments here enumerated ("Ancient Scotch Melodies, &c.," p. 97, Edinburgh, 1838), remarks: "We need hardly observe that the croude was the viol or violin, the name as well as the instrument being obviously derived from the ancient British crwth."
30No doubt the name crowd was not unfrequently applied to the violin when this instrument came into use. A common fiddler, or a violin-player of the most torturing accom-
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