Books › The violin, how to make it, 1880 › scan 21
Scan 21
The violin, how to make it, 1880
14 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 15. See the scan on archive.org.
1but from other sources, we are inclined to think different — but this is a matter more suitable to the researches of the antiquarian, than to the general reading of the Violin amateur.
3Many other ancient representations of the Violin species might be enumerated, of which the following must suffice for the present: — Upon one of the stained glass windows of Dronfield Church, Derbyshire; of Staple Church, Kent; St. Denis, near Paris; also upon the carved seats of the choir in Worcester Cathedral; in the Musurgia of Lucinius; on the façade of Amiens Cathedral; — all the foregoing being ascribed to a pretty early period. As previously remarked, the term "Fiddler" cannot be accepted to signify "Violinist" at all times, although it was evidently used by many ancient writers to designate a player on the Violin; yet in numerous cases, where early mention is made of the word, it is impossible that it can be classed as Violinist. The term Vidulator, for Fiddler; Violer, or player on the Viol; Crowder, or Crouther, all appear in a single document of the year 1306. In the Song of the Nibelungen, which is considered the most ancient of all the Teutonic poetical romances which have been preserved entire, we find the following: —
5"Folker knight of courage, bold by his side sat he;
6A sharp and mighty fiddle-stick held the hero free;"
8again,
10"Raging like a savage bear; a fiddler mad is he;
11Praised be my luck that from the fiend safely I could flee" —
13where thus the fiddle-stick is made to represent the sword of the warrior. This poem is ascribed to the eleventh century; and again, in the following century, in the life of St. Christopher, mention is made of "the fithele and of song." Fiddlers also formed a part of the Royal Household in the fifteenth century, — their number about this time having been limited to three, and in the same century mention is made of several throughout Scotland, as "the fidelar of Dunbar," "the brokin-bakkit fithelar in Sanct Androws," whilst at the commencement of the following century every Scottish town possessed a "fithelar," as various ancient documents testify.
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