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Encyclopedia Britannica

FIDDLE (O. Eng. fithele, fidel, &c., Fr. vide, viole, violon; M. H. Ger. videle, mod. Ger. Fiedel)

This article appears in Volume V10, Page 320 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: FAT-FLA

FIDDLE (O. Eng. fithele, fidel, &c., Fr. vide, viole, violon; M. H. Ger. videle, mod. Ger. Fiedel) , a popular term for the

violin

VIOLIN

, derived from the names of certain of its ancestors. The word

fiddle

FIDDLE (O. Eng. fithele, fidel, &c., Fr. vide, viole, violon; M. H. Ger. videle, mod. Ger. Fiedel)

antedates the

appearance

APPEARANCE (from Lat. apparere, to appear)

of the

violin

VIOLIN

by several centuries,, and in England did not always represent an

instrument

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

of the same type. The word has first been traced in 1205 in Layamon's Brut (7002), " of harpe, of salteriun, of fithele and of coriun." In Chaucer's time the

fiddle

FIDDLE (O. Eng. fithele, fidel, &c., Fr. vide, viole, violon; M. H. Ger. videle, mod. Ger. Fiedel)

was evidently a well-known

instrument

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

:
" For him was lever have at his beddes hed A twenty bokes, clothed in black or red,
Of Aristotle and his Philosophie,
Than robes riche or fidel or sautrie."
(Prologue, v. 298.)
The origin of the fiddle is of the greatest

interest

INTEREST

; it will be found inseparable from that of the violin both as regards the

instruments

INSTRUMENTS

and the etymology of the words; the remote common ancestor is the ketharah of the Assyrians, the parent of the Greek cithara. The Romans are responsible for the word fiddle, having bestowed upon a kind of cithara--probably then in its first transitionthe name of fidiculae (more rarely fidicula), a diminutive form of fides. In Alain de

Lille

LILLE

's De planctu naturae against the word lira stands as equivalent vioel, with the definition " Lira est quoddam gentle citharae vel fitola alioquin de reot. Hoc instrumentum est multum vulgare." This is a marginal note in writing of the 13th century.'
Some of the transitions from fidicula to fiddle are made evident in the accompanying table:
Latin . fidiculae
Medieval Latin vitula, fitola.
French viole,

vielle

VIELLE

, viole.
Provencal . viula.
Spanish viguela, vihuela, vigolo.
Old High German . fidula.
Middle High German videle.
German fiedel, violine.
Italian viola, violino.
Dutch vedel.
Danish fiddel.
Anglo-Saxon fithele.
Old English fithele, fythal, fithel, fythylle, fidel,
fidylle, (

south

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

) vithele.
For the descent of the guitar-fiddle, the first bowed ancestor of the violin, through many transitions from the cithara, see CITHARA, GUITAR and GUITAR-FIDDLE.
In the minnesinger and troubadour fiddles, of which evidences abound during the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, are to be observed the structural characteristics of the violin and its ancestors in the course of evolution. The principal of these are first of all the shallow sound.-chest, composed of belly and back, almost flat, connected by ribs (also present in the cithara), with incurvations more or less pronounced, an arched bridge, a

finger

FINGER

-board and strings (varying in number), vibrated by means
' See C. E. H. de Coussemaker, Memoire sur Hucbald (Paris, 1841).of a bow. The central rose sound-holes of stringed

instruments

INSTRUMENTS

whose strings are plucked by fingers, or plectrum have given place to smaller lateral sound-
holes placed on each side of the strings. It is in Germany,' where contemporary drawings of fiddles of the 13th and 14th centuries furnish an authoritative clue, and in France, that the development may best be followed. The German minnesinger fiddle with sloping shoulders was the prototype of the viols, whereas the guitar-
fiddle produced the violin From Julius Ruhlmann's Geschichte der through the intermediary of the Bogeninstrumente.
Italian bowed Lyra. Minnesinger Fiddle. Germany, 13th Century, from the Manesse The fiddle of the Carolingian MSS.
epoch,such, for instance, as
that mentioned by Otfrid of Weissenburg2 in his Harmony of the Gospels (c. 868),
" Sih thar ouch al ruarit
This orgasm fuarit
Lira joh fidula," &c.,
was in all probability still an instrument whose strings were plucked by the fingers, a cithara in transition. (K. S.)

End of Article: FIDDLE (O. Eng. fithele, fidel, &c., Fr. vide, viole, violon; M. H. Ger. videle, mod. Ger. Fiedel)

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