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 49
Scan 49
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
8 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 29. See the scan on archive.org.
1marks of the crwth; and the similarity of the sound-holes to the modern ones will be observed (Fig. 5).
3Carter, in his "Ancient Sculpture," gives the figure of an angel playing a crwth, in Worcester Cathedral, of about the twelfth century, under part of the seats of the choir. It has five strings, a tail-piece, and two sound-holes; no neck, no bridge, the left hand being placed through the hole at the lower end to manage the strings. The bow is short, and in form like the modern double-bass bow; it is a characteristic example, but in this instance the instrument was held like the viol (Fig. 6).
5The word crwth was occasionally used for the violin and viol down to a recent time, and is still so applied in some parts of the country, most commonly to the violoncello, or bass-viol, as it is also called. A curious example may be given from a work not likely to be much known to our readers; and old Cornish drama of the date probably of the fourteenth century, called "Ordinale de Origine Mundi." The ancient Cornish language was akin to the Welsh, both having the same origin, and this extract will show that the words "crowd" and "fylh" were applied to different instruments. King David is giving directions to his minstrels—
7"Whethong mestrels ha tabours trey-hans harpes ha trompours cythol crowd fylh ha savtry psalmus gyttrens ha nakyrns organs in weth cymbalys recordys ha symphony."
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