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 40
Scan 40
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
6 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 20. See the scan on archive.org.
1ages were established in our country. The bow, we consider, was afterwards introduced or invented here, for we find here the earliest trace of it, and none of any antiquity in the East. The wand or plectrum was an approach to the bow; the beating on the tightened strings inducing the experiment of the effect of friction, and thus leading to its use.
3Long before the time of Caesar there were inhabitants in our land who had made considerable progress in the arts and learning of the early ages, as the Celtic records remaining prove; and the earliest of these show their love for music. It is supposed by scholars of high repute, that Ireland and the south-western parts of England were in very early ages peopled from the peninsular of Spain, where the Phoenicians had formed a colony or settlement; and many parts of the south coast may have been probably peopled from the opposite coast of Gaul. In other parts, settlers came over from Scandinavia and Germany—for the first visit of the Saxons or Northmen was long previous to Hengist and Horsa—and they appear to have had at an early age an instrument of the fiddle or viol class.
5The crwth of the Britons resembles to a considerable extent the Egyptian and Ninevite instrument before referred to, and was well known to the Continent in very early times. Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, who lived about the end of the sixth century, says—
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