Books › The violin, how to make it, 1880 › scan 23
Scan 23
The violin, how to make it, 1880
17 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 17. See the scan on archive.org.
1author, about the same date, we learn the following:—"Next morning come the fiddlers, and scrape him a wicked reveillez. The drums rattle, the shaumers tote, the trumpets sound ton ta ra, ra, ra, and the whole street rings with the benedictions and good wishes of fiddlers, pipers, and trumpetters."
3Shirley, in his Lady of Pleasure, written about 1635, makes one of the characters say:—
5"The case is alter'd since we lived i' the country;
6We do not now invite the poor o' the parish
7To dinner, keep a table for the tenants;
8Our kitchen does not smell of beef; the cellar
9Defies the price of malt and hops; the footmen
10And coach-drivers may be drunk, like gentlemen,
11With wine; nor will three Fiddlers upon holidays,
12With aid of bagpipes, that called in the country
13To dance and plough the hall up with their hobnails,
14Now make my lady merry."
16The Violin about this time was used as a military musical instrument in France, Spain, and several other parts of the Continent, as well as in Britain. In the Memoirs of Count Grammont, a description is given of the siege of Lerida in 1647, by the Prince de Condé, who "ordered the trenches to be mounted at noonday by his own regiment, at the head of which marched four and twenty Fiddlers. Night approaching, we were all in high spirits, our Violins were playing soft airs, and we were comfortably regaling ourselves," he thus pleasantly goes on; whilst in the British army there was also a complement of Violinists, and who at this time were spoken of as being anything but a "tee-total society." Twenty-four was the number employed in the royal household of King Charles II., as well as in that of Henry IV. of France. In a letter of King Charles to his aunt, the Queen of Bohemia, written at Cologne, he complains of "the want of good Fiddlers, and of some capable of teaching new dances"; and this sovereign, adopting the French fashion, "would have twenty-four Violins playing before him while he was at meals, as being more airie and brisk than Viols." In France, almost every one of the wealthier classes had Violinists attached to their household, and from an authoress who wrote about this time, we learn the following particulars relative to King Charles:—"At his second visit, he begged of me to let
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