Books › The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878 › scan 43
Scan 43
The violin: some account of that leading instrument, and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time;, 1878
13 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1speaks, it is John Sanderson who won't come to, and the fiddler's mandate is issued to him, not to her.
3"The woman drops the cushion at the feet of her favourite man: the same ceremony and the same dance are repeated, till every man and woman (the pot-bearer last) have been taken out, and all have danced round the room in a file. The pence are the perquisite of the fiddler. There is a description of this dance in Miss Hutton's 'Oakwood Hall.'"
5Then follows, in Hone's Book, a further illustration of this curious custom, in "numerous verse"—but the prose account is here sufficient.
7The dialogue in the old puppet dramas (says Strutt) were mere jumbles of absurdity and nonsense, intermixed with low immoral discourses passing between Punch and the fiddler, for the orchestra rarely admitted of more than one minstrel; and these flashes of merriment were made offensive to decency by the actions of the puppet. In the reign of James II, there was a noted merry-andrew named Philips; "This man," says Granger, "was some time fiddler to a puppet-show; in which capacity he held many a dialogue with Punch, in much the same strain as he did afterwards with the mountebank doctor, his master upon the stage. This zany, being regularly educated, had confessedly the advantage of his brethren."
9The following may be seen in volume the 1st of Purcell's Catches, on two persons of the name of Young, father and son, who lived in St. Paul's Churchyard—The one was an excellent instrument-maker, and the other an excellent performer on the fiddle.
11You scrapers that want a good fiddle, well strung,
12You must go to the man that is old, while he's Young;
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