Books › The history of the violin, and other instruments played on with the bow from the remotest times to the present. Also, an account of the principal makers, English and foreign, with numerous illustrations, 1864 › scan 47
Scan 47
The history of the violin, and other instruments played on with the bow from the remotest times to the present. Also, an account of the principal makers, English and foreign, with numerous illustrations, 1864
28 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 30. See the scan on archive.org.
1Thus translated by the able editor, Mr. Edwin Norris—
3"Blow, minstrels, and tabours;
4Three hundred harps and trumpets;
5 Dulcimer, fiddle, viol, and psaltery;
6Shawms, lutes, and kettle drums;
7Organs, also cymbals,
8 Recorders and symphony."
10The crwth was of early date in Scotland, as well as in England and Wales, and an instrument of this nature was among the ornaments on the outside of Melross Church, founded in 1136.
12Dauney, in his "Ancient Scottish Melodies," quotes from an old poem called the "Houlate," 1450, where are mentioned—
14"The psaltry, the citholis, the soft atharift,
15 The croude and the monycordis, the gythornis gay;
16The rote and the recordour, the ribus, the rift," &c.
18Edward Jones, in the "Relics of the Welsh Bards," gives a poetical description of the crwth, written in the fifteenth century by Gruffydd Davydd ab Howel, with a translation. It agrees very much with that given by Daines Barrington, to which we shall presently refer. It is said that Bishop Morgan, in his translation of the New Testament into Welsh, printed in 1567, translated "vials of wrath" by crythan, that is, crwds or fiddles. Hawes, in his "Pastime of Pleasure," of nearly the same date, thus describes the attendants of Dame Music:—
20"There sat dame Musyke, with all her mynstrasy;
21 As tabours, trumpettes, with pipes melodious,
22Sakbuttes, organs, and the recorder swetely,
23Harpes, lutes, and crouddes right delycyous;
24Cymphans, clarycordes, eche in theyr degre,
25 Did sytte aboute theyr ladycs magcste."
27We find the word crowd used for fiddle by the dramatic writers of the seventeenth century. For instance, in
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