Fiddle

“ Kissed the sleeping world to dreams of better things.
Joy was lit in every corner, love was smiling at our side,
Golden glamour o’er the dawning days was cast;
Gaily, gaily sang the fiddle, while we marched with swinging stride
Through the flowers that hid the failures of the past.
Do you ever dream you hear it? Does it bring the vision back,
With the curlew, and the moonlight on the trees?
Do the wavelets ripple shoreward with the flotsam as the wrack,
When a fiddle plays the simple melodies? ”

“ For you must know it was the same beggar-man who had got them all three; he had only changed his shape each time, that the lad might not know him again.
"I have always had such a longing to hear a fiddle go, and see folk so glad and merry that they couldn't help dancing," said the lad; "and so, if I may wish what I choose, I will wish myself such a fiddle, that everything that has life must dance to its tune." ”

“ A fiddle wrought this, or rather genius, in whose hand a jews-harp is the lyre of Orpheus, a fiddle the harp of David, a chisel a hewer of heroic forms, a brush or a pen the scepter of souls, and, alas! a nail a picklock.
Inside every fiddle is a soul, but a coy one. The nine hundred and ninety-nine never win it. They play rapid tunes, but the soul of beautiful gayety is not there; slow tunes, very slow ones, wherein the spirit of whining is mighty, but the sweet soul of pathos is absent ”

“ So went I with the Fairy Queen in her golden coach drawn by six white mice, and, behold, I was in Camilla's concert-room.
It is to be a fiddle affair. Now I am free to say, if there is anything I hate, it is a fiddle. Hide it away under as many Italian coatings as you choose,—viol, violin, viola, violone, violoncello, violoncellettissimo, at bottom it is all one, a fiddle; in its best estate, a diddle, diddle, frivolous, rattling, Yankee-Doodle, country-tavern-ball whirligig, without dignity, sentiment, or power ”

“ I wanted to hear "Rosin the Beau," the cradle-song of the fiddle,—the sweet, simple, foolish old song, which every "blind crowder" who could handle a fiddle-bow could play in his sleep fifty years ago, and which is now wellnigh forgotten. It is not a beautiful air; it may have no merit at all, musically speaking ”

“ He glanced at the violin as it lay within; then he took it out. He handled it reverently. I have noticed that a genuine musician always does handle a fiddle—even a common fiddle—with a sort of reverence. ”

“ Compere Martin, as he was commonly called, was the factotum of the place-sportsman, schoolmaster, and land surveyor. He could sing, dance, and, above all, play on the fiddle, an invaluable accomplishment in an old French Creole village, for the inhabitants have a hereditary love for balls and fetes; if they work but little, they dance a great deal, and a fiddle is the joy of their heart. ”

“ There's old Young and young Young, both men of renown,
Old sells, and Young plays, the best fiddle in town;
Young and old live together, and may they live long,
Young to play an old fiddle, old to sell a new song. ”

“ The very way that the country fiddler held his fiddle against his chest and never against his shoulder like the trained musician! The very way that the country fiddler grasped his bow, firmly and squarely in the middle, and never lightly at the end like a trained musician! The very way that he let go and went off and kept on—the amazing, inimitable spirit, the gayety, the rhythm, the swing! No trained musician ever heard the music of the country fiddler without wondering at its power, and longing in vain to know the secret of its charm. ”

“ It is also more or less of an art, but only the connoisseur is able to explain wherein and why. To the “man in the street” a fiddle is just a fiddle, as like any or all other fiddles, as one pea is like another. ”

“ In fact, with great respect for my friend Mr Bunting, the fiddle it is that ought to be our national instrument, as it is that which is most closely and agreeably associated with the best and happiest impulses of the Irish heart. The very language of the people themselves is a proof of this; for whilst neither harp nor bagpipe is ever introduced as illustrating peculiarities of feeling by any reference to their influence, the fiddle is an agreeable instrument in their hands, in more senses than one. ”

“ With whirling and waltzing, and light joyous dance,
⁠They begin with their sweethearts the ball.
The fife and the fiddle all merrily sound,
They twine, and they glide, and with nimbleness bound,
They whisper, and chatter, and clatter around ”

“ Cock-a-doodle-do!
My dame has lost her shoe;
My master's lost his fiddle-stick,
Alack! what shall I do?
Cock-a-doodle-do!
What is my dame to do?
Till master finds his fiddle-stick,
She'll dance without a shoe. ”

“ A violin is only a fiddle with a college education.
I have had the feeling ever since that you and I come into this world like the fiddle comes from the factory. We have a body and a neck. That is about all there is either to us or to the fiddle. We are empty. We have no strings. ”

“ Hawksley's fiddle! He had all but forgotten. All right. If the poor beggar wanted to scrape a fiddle, scrape it he should. The least he, Cutty, could do would be to accede to any and every whim Hawksley expressed. Wasn't he planning to rob the beggar of the drums, happen they ever turned up? But how the deuce to pick out a fiddle which would have a tune in it? ”

“ His hands were clasped over the smaller end of a violin-case that stood upright before him, and his forehead fell wearily upon them.
"Look there!" said one of the young men, turning to his companions, who were descending the stairs, "don't that look tremendously like a fiddle?"
"A fiddle! a fiddle!" ran from lip to lip, till the sound ended in a shout up stairs. "Let us see where it is. Where did it come from?"
This clamor aroused the young man, who lifted his forehead from the violin-case and turned a pair of full blue eyes misty from fatigue or some other cause, upon the group. ”

“ When I stop beating and imitate one of your instruments—suppose it is the fiddle—then you stop playing the fiddle, Carita, and begin to beat the drum. If you don't stop instantly, and begin to beat the drum before I call out fiddle, you have to stand up here and take my place. ”

“ There was bowing and shuffling of feet and, as the tempo of the fiddle increased, heels clicked against the bare floor and the caller’s voice rang out above music and laughter:
They danced to the fiddle music of O Suzanna and Life on the Ocean Wave, and Uncle Mose had calls to suit any tune:
Now and then a breathless girl would drop out and rest a moment leaning against the wall. And just for fun an oldster like Old Buck Rawlins, who didn’t even have a partner, caught up one boot toe and hopped off to a corner moaning:
Sometimes a young miss limped off to a chair. ”

“ There was a silence—at last, one of the young gentlemen spoke, and replied—"that he had long since come to a conclusion that dancing was a very foolish thing, and that there was something extremely ridiculous in seeing a room-full of men and women jumping about to the sound of a fiddle. In short, he regarded it as an amusement derogatory to the dignity of human nature." ”

“ I gave him a penny, for which he thanked me, and then I asked about the fiddle. He carved and made it himself out of firewood in the workhouse! The handle part (forgive my barbarism!) is "a bit of ash." It was much about the level of North American Indian art, but very touching as to patient ingenuity. He asked if anybody had told me about him. I said, "No. But I've a husband who plays the fiddle," and I gave him the balance of my loose coppers! He said, "Have you? He plays, does he? Well. ”

“ A triumphal march, performed by twenty instruments, in honour of his rival, succeeded in overturning the reason of the unhappy youth. His fiddle was before him on the table—that [Pg 227] fiddle which had disappointed his hopes. Exasperated, out of his senses, the brewer's son seized the instrument—a moment he held it aloft at the corner of the chimney, and yielding to the rage that gnawed his soul, he dashed it into a thousand pieces. Faults, like misfortunes, never come single. ”

“ Our cut No. 118 is taken from a manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Cotton, Domitian A. ii.) , and represents a female minstrel playing on the fiddle; she has the upper part of a lady, and the lower parts of a mare, a combination which appears to have been rather familiar to the imagination of the mediæval artists. In our cut No. 119, which is taken from a copy made by Carter of one of the misereres in Ely Cathedral, it is not quite clear whether the performer on the fiddle be a monster or merely a cripple ”

“ Around the nearer fires may be discerned shadow-like figures moving round the blaze in the dance, the music of the fiddle being almost drowned by the singing and merriment of the young people who are taking part in the proceedings. ”

“ Then another jump, and another howl, as if the piano had two tails and you had trod on both of 'em at once, and then a grand clatter and scramble and string of jumps, up and down, back and forward, one hand over the other, like a stampede of rats and mice more than like anything I call music. I like to hear a woman sing, and I like to hear a fiddle sing, but these noises they hammer out of their wood-and-ivory anvils—don't talk to me ”

“ At the stage when the fiddle-strings floated like filaments in the void, feeling their way towards an evolutionary other end of nowhere, there could be nothing serving any purpose of a fiddle. A drum with a hole in is not a drum at all. But an evolutionary drum has to turn slowly into a drum, when it has begun by being only a hole. ”

“ One of my earliest recollections is of hearing, as a tiny thing in petticoats, the tedious noises of the professional musician, and the E A D G of the fiddle was the accompaniment to all my games. From noon until seven in the evening I played amid the squeak of the fiddle, the chant of the 'cello, the solemn throb of the double bass, and [Pg 97] the querulous wail of flute and piccolo; and always the music was the music of Italy, for these elders worked in operatic orchestras. ”

“ In connexion with this, a good deal of enthusiasm has been lavished by connoisseurs on the beauty of design and varnish of the old Cremona Violins, and even in some useful and reputable works on this subject this enthusiasm has been carried to a point where it can only be described as silly and grotesque. A fiddle, after all, even a Stradivari, is not a work of pure art, like a piece of painting or sculpture: it is as merely a machine as a watch, a gun, or a plough. ”

“ Then the countryman rejoiced at his good luck, and said, "I like many things better than money: first, I will have a bow that will bring down everything I shoot at; secondly, a fiddle that will set every one dancing that hears me play upon it; and thirdly, I should like that every one should grant what I ask." The dwarf said he should have his three wishes; so he gave him the bow and fiddle and went his way. ”

“ Its main excellences are purely mechanical, and though most good fiddles are also well-designed and handsome, not a few are decidedly ugly. Leopold Mozart, in his Violin-School, has some pertinent remarks on this fallacy. To choose a fiddle for its outward symmetry and varnish, he says, is like choosing a singing bird for its fine feathers. ”

“ They denied having taken it, so he had to depart, leaving his fiddle behind him. The chief's son, being a musician, used to play on the Jogi's fiddle, and in his hands the music it gave forth delighted the ears of all who heard it. [44]
When all the household were absent at their labours in the fields, the Bonga girl used to come out of the bamboo fiddle, and prepared the family meal. Having eaten her own share, she placed that of the chief's son under his bed, and covering it up to keep off the dust, re-entered the fiddle. ”

“ The expression diddle diddle according to Murray's Dictionary means to make music without the utterance of words, while fiddle faddle is said to indicate nonsense, and to fiddle is to fuss. But both words seem to go back to the association of dancing, as is suggested by the songs on Twelfth Night, or by the following nursery rhyme which refers to the same celebration.
A cat came fiddling out of the barn,
With a pair of bagpipes under her arm,
She could sing nothing but fiddle cum fee,
The mouse has married the humble bee;
Pipe, cat, dance, mouse;
We'll have a wedding in our good house. ”

“ Forty-five fiddlers to play the fiddle;
Eight foot, left foot, down the middle.
Conjuring tricks with the poker and tongs,
Riddles and Forfeits, singing of songs;
One fat man, too fat by far,
Tried "Twinkle, twinkle, little star!" ”

“ Fidd′le-fadd′ling.—ns. Fidd′le-head, an ornament at a ship's bow, over the cut-water, consisting of a scroll turning aft or inward; Fidd′ler, one who fiddles: a small crab of genus Gelasimus; Fidd′le-string, a string for a fiddle; Fidd′le-wood, a tropical American tree yielding valuable hard wood.—adj. Fidd′ling, trifling, busy about trifles.—Fiddler's green, a sailor's name for a place of frolic on shore.—Play first, or second, fiddle, to take the part of the first, or second, violin-player in an orchestra: to take a leading, or a subordinate, part in anything; Scotch fiddle, the itch. ”

“ He had a long time lived sequestered from the world, and dedicated not less than eight hours a day to the practice of music. His shrunk shanks were twisted in a peculiar form, by the constant posture in which he sate; and so indifferent was he about the goodness of his instrument, that to my astonishment, he always played on a common Dutch fiddle, the original price of which could not be more than half a guinea ”