Admitting the genuine and perfect violin to be rightfully assignable to the Italians, it may be of some interest, now, to present a few more records relating, principally, to the instrument in its imperfect character, when it bore only that sort of analogy to the true instrument, that the ‘satyr’ is said to have borne to ‘Hyperion.’
The “Musurgia, seu Praxis Musicæ,” of the Benedictine Monk Luscinius, published in 1542, represents (coarsely cut in wood) as the bowed instruments then in use, the rebec, or three-stringed violin, and the viol di gamba. The instruments of the viol tribe, however, which are supposed to have been those that led more immediately to the construction of the true violin, considerably precede the above period in their date of origin. Violars, or performers on the viol, whose business it was to accompany the Troubadours in their singing of the Provençal poetry5, were common in the 12th century; and, in a treatise on music, written by Jerome of Westphalia in the 13th century, there is particular mention made of the instrument known by the name of viol.
Under various modifications of the term fiddle, there are to be found many very early allusions to an instrument, such as it was, bearing some resemblance to the violin. Fidle is a Saxon word of considerable antiquity; and from the old Gothic are traced the derivations of
1. Middle High German. Videl (noun), Videlœre (noun personal), Videln (verb, to fiddle), Videl-boge (fiddle bow).
2. Icelandic. Fidla.
3. Danish. Fedel.
Then we have Vedel, Veel, Viool (Dutch); Vedel, Vedele (Flemish), Fiedel, Fidel, Geige (Modern German).
Fythele, Fithele, – and Fythelers (fiddlers) are alluded to in the Old English Romances. In the legendary life of St. Christopher, written about the year 1200, is this passage: —
…Cristofre hym served longe;
The Kynge loved melodye of fithele and of songe.
The poet Lidgate, at the beginning of the 15th century, writes of
Instrumentys that did excelle,
Many moo than I kan telle:
Harpys, Fythales, and eke Rotys, &c.
Chaucer, in his “Canterbury Tales,” says of the Oxford Clerk, that he was so fond of books and study, as to have loved Aristotle better
Than robes rich, or fidel, or sautrie —
and his Absolon, the Parish-Clerk, a genius of a different cast, and exquisitely described, is a spruce little fellow, who sang, danced, and played on the species of fiddle then known. An instrument remotely allied to the fiddle – the ribible, a diminutive of rebec, a small viol with three strings – is also alluded to by Chaucer. Referring to a later period, there is evidence to show that an instrument of the violin kind was used in England before the dissolution of monasteries, in the time of our eighth Henry, in the fact that something similar to it in shape is seen depicted upon a glass window of the chancel of Dronfield church, in the county of Derby; an edifice which was erected early in the sixteenth century.
At what period the legitimate violin may have found its way from Italy into this country, it would, I fear, be very difficult to ascertain with exactness; but it is easy to suppose that, when once that event had occurred, the neater shape and superior qualities exhibited by the new comer, would speedily render him the model for imitation, and lead to the multiplication of his species here, and to the displacement of the baser resemblances to him. The true instrument, however, was for a long while among us, ere its merits came into just appreciation. Until the period of the Restoration, it was held, for the most part, in very low esteem, and seldom found in less humble hands than those of fiddlers at fairs, and such like itinerant caterers of melody for the populace6. Its grand attribute, the superior power of expressing almost all that a human voice can produce, except the articulation of words, was at first so utterly unknown, that it was not considered a gentleman’s instrument, or worthy of being admitted into “good company.” The lute7, the harp, the viol, and theorbo, were in full possession of the public ear, and the poetic pen; nor has this latter authority ever been thoroughly propitiated by the later-born child of Melos, whose first screams on coming into the world may perhaps have irrecoverably alarmed the sensitive sons of Apollo. Moreover, poetry is ever apt to prefer the old to the new, and often recoils with distaste from what is modern. “Though the violin surpasses the lute,” says a recent ingenious writer, “as much as the musket surpasses the bow and arrow, yet Cupid has not yet learned to wound his votaries with a bullet, nor have our poets begun to write odes or stanzas to their violins.”
In the 39th Queen Elizabeth, a statute was passed by which “Ministrels, wandering abroad,” were included among “rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars,” and were adjudged to be punished as such. “This act,” says Percy, in his Reliques of English Poetry, “seems to have put an end to the profession.” That writer suggests, however, that although the character ceased to exist, the appellation might be continued, and applied to fiddlers, or other common musicians; and in this sense, he adds, it is used in an ordinance in the time of Cromwell (1656), wherein it is enacted that if any of the “persons commonly called Fiddlers or Minstrels shall at any time be taken playing, fiddling, and making music in any inn, alehouse, or tavern, or shall be taken proffering themselves, or desiring or intreating any … to hear them play or make music in any of the places aforesaid,” they are to be “adjudged and declared to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars8.” By a similar change or declension, according to Mr. Percy, John of Gaunt’s King of the Minstrels came, at length, to be called, like the Roi des Violons in France, King of the Fiddles– it being always to be borne in mind, nevertheless, that it was only as yet a baser kind of instrument which brought its professors into such scrapes9.
The term crowd, as well as that of fiddle, was commonly used in England before the appearance of the perfect Violin, but appears to have been soon disused (along with the barbarous instrument it designated) after that period. Butler, in his “Hudibras,” employs both terms indiscriminately, and seems to find enjoyment in linking them with mean and ludicrous associations – a tendency which must be allowed to have been quite in keeping with the feeling of the times he describes. His motley rabble, whom he puts in the way of the knight and his squire, were special affecters of the instrument he delights to dishonour,
And to crack’d fiddle, and hoarse tabor,
In merriment did drudge and labor.
He makes contemptuous allusion, also, to certain persons
That keep their consciences in cases,
As fiddlers do their crowds and bases.
Crowdero, the fiddle-noted agent in the story, is made to cut, on the whole, a very sorry figure. Thus, as to his instrument, and his manner of calling it into exercise:
A squeaking engine he applied
Unto his neck, on north-east side,
Just where the hangman does dispose,
To special friends, the knot of noose.
When