Scan 23
The violin & its story : or the history & construction of the violin, 1905
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 9. See the scan on archive.org.
1ungainly figures holding instruments, and amongst them a crowned person holding in his left hand a three-stringed Crouth, and in his right hand a bow. Fig. 4 is a reproduction of this figure.
3The instrument is recognised by the opening through which the left hand is pushed so that it may finger the strings. Another representation of the "Crouth trithant" is to be found amongst the architectural embellishments of Melrose Abbey, in Scotland, which was built in the early years of the fourteenth century.
5How long the three-stringed Crouth maintained its ground is difficult to say, as we can trace no references to the instrument until well on into the eighteenth century, when we find the Crouth in a very advanced state, and fitted with six strings. Daines Barrington, a magistrate in the Welsh counties of Anglesey and Carnarvon, knew a bard named John Morgan, born in the Island of Anglesey in 1711, who played upon a six-stringed Crouth. Morgan played this instrument before Barrington, who made a good drawing of it, which he published, with some comments, in a work on archaeology. This description of the Crouth, together with some further information furnished by one Edward Jones, enabled Fétis to give the following particulars of the instrument:—
7The Crouth is in the shape of an elongated trapezoid, having a length, from top to base, of fifty-seven centimetres; its greatest width, at the tailpiece, is twenty-seven centimetres; its narrowest part, at the upper end, is twenty-three centimetres in width; and its thickness at the edges five centimetres. The finger-board is twenty-eight centimetres long. Of the six strings with which the Crouth is fitted, two lie outside the finger-board, and are merely plucked with the thumb of the left hand. The other four strings are played with the bow. At the lower end the strings are held by the tailpiece, while at the upper end they go through holes bored in the frame; the strings rest on a ridge, and are held by pegs on the under side of the instrument, which pegs are turned by a key or lever. The table has two circular sound-holes, of a
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