Books › The violin, how to make it, 1880 › scan 22
Scan 22
The violin, how to make it, 1880
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 16. See the scan on archive.org.
1In 1505 a "hielan fithelar" is spoken of as having received gratuities in Perth. The Violin appears to have been one of the many instruments used about this time in accompanying the marriage-guests to the church, as from a work in 1543, we read, "Such folks also do come to the church with all manner of pompe and pride, gorgiousness of rayment and jewels. They come with a great noise of harpes, lutes, kyttes, basens and drommes, wherwyth they trouble the whole church," etc. Upon the return of Queen Mary to Scotland in 1560, Violins and Rebecs were used in Edinburgh to celebrate her arrival; and in the following year we have mention of Violins being used to accompany the plays in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, and a few years later a Violin is described belonging to this Queen, with a hole cut through the hand for admitting the thumb of the player. In a rare tract, written during the reign of this sovereign, the author, referring to the ancient Morris-dancers, observes, "Footing the Morris about the May-pole, and he not hearing the minstrelsie for the fidling, the tune for the sound, nor the pipe for the noise of the tabor, bluntly demanded if they were not all beside themselves, that they so lip'd and skip'd without any occasion," from which it may be presumed that the "fiddlers" in those ancient times sometimes combined to render their playing a work of "strength."
3In the records of Orkney is a passage referring to the execution of a murderer in 1616, who had killed "ane, David Sandie, fidler, with ane durk;" and about this time the Violin was also well known in the Shetland Islands. From a quaint author in 1634, we cite the following referring to country wakes:—"They hate the laurell, which is the reason they have no poets amongst them, so as if there be any that seeme to have a smatch in that generous science, he arrives no higher than the style of a ballet, wherein they have a reasonable facultie, especially at a wake, when they assemble themselves together at a towne greene, for then they sing their ballets and lay out such throats as the country fidlers cannot be heard." A contemporary author relates the following on marriage-feasts:—"Some cannot be merrie without the noise of fiddlers, who scrape acquaintance at the first sight; nor sing, unless the divell himself come in for a part," etc. And from another
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