Books › The heart of music; the story of the violin, 1906 › scan 118
Scan 118
The heart of music; the story of the violin, 1906
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1The Heart of Music
3Now, as a matter of fact, the persistence of the name crwth is doubly or trebly curious and interesting for these reasons. In Welsh, and the instrument was essentially Welsh in origin, the word crwth signifies "a bulging box,"—not a bad primitive description of the curving violin-body. Yet when we first meet the crwth it is in the form of a lyre. This suggests either some curious error in the old records, a coincidence in the matter of name and description, or the possibility that the crwth, when first introduced into Britain by the Phoenicians, had a hollow body and sound-board like the Egyptian nefru and nebel and the other Oriental lutes and tambouras. It would be a curious example in evolution if it were true that the crwth developed backward, as it were, into a primitive lyre before returning to its original form and the ultimate justification of its name.
5These primitive Northerners were far from being without a musical system, and they were the first race in the world to have a professional organisation of musicians. The position of the "Scops" was defined by special laws in 940, made by Howel Dha, the Welsh king. These laws specified what the Scops were entitled to—it really amounted to being what they were not entitled to—and their rights and duties in general.
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