Scan 22
The Fiddle Fancier's Guide: A Manual of Information Regarding Violins …, 1892
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1It so happens that the rejection of this evidence would not, in this case, be of great importance, but it might have been, and at any rate, it is not a right way to deal with evidence, however slight it may be. The same author says, "sure enough, in Wales they found a curious sort of fiddle, said by the natives to have been in use with them from time immemorial, as people always say when they possess something peculiar, the origin of which they are unable to trace. The supposed high antiquity enhances to the people the value of their relic, especially if they find it admired by foreigners and learned antiquaries." So much for the claim of poor Wales. Just previously the same distinguished writer had given an illustration of a Burmese "Thro," which happens to be a very near approach to violin form, and which appears to have been unearthed from a book of travels (Embassy to Ava in the year 1795). The only evidence which is adduced in support of the conjecture that this instrument is of Burmese invention, or, at least, not a reproduction from a European model, is the statement of the person who was of the Embassy. "I at first imagined it had been of European introduction, and brought to Pegu by the Portuguese; but I was assured that it is an original instrument of the country." This simple statement of a traveller, together with the circumstance that the Burmese name "Thro" is said to be a derivative from a Sanskrit root sarva, which means "entire" or "universal," and from which a number of Indian musical instruments have received their names, is to be accepted as evidence that the Burmese fiddle is ancient and indigenous to the country in which a member of a
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