Books › The violin and its music, 1881 › scan 39
Scan 39
The violin and its music, 1881
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 19. See the scan on archive.org.
1Section I.—The Viol Gothic.
3CHAPTER III.
5ENQUIRY renders it clear that not far removed from the period of the fall of the Roman Empire, the chief European nations possessed a bowed instrument which, to avoid troubling the reader with a confused nomenclature, we will call a barbarous Fiddle. Among the Anglo-Saxons, in France, Spain, and Italy, such an instrument existed. Its shape often varied with the different nations that fostered it, but its character and the purpose to which it was applied were identical. The Fithele of the Anglo-Saxons, the Rebec of the French, though less savage than their progenitor, were but vulgar Fiddles, and lived in the same company, that of the dance and mirth. It is, however, not until we seek the corresponding Fiddle among the Germans that we discover it bearing a title which throws a direct light upon the history of its kind. The Teutonic name Geige apparently carries with it, the meaning of the instrument. In the early ages of mankind dancing or jigging must have been done to the sound of the voice, next to that of the pipe, and when the bow was discovered, to that of a stringed instrument which was named the Geige from its primary association with dancing; and unless it
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