One should not lay too much stress on pictorial records; even our contemporary artists are not free from error, and it would be interesting to know what future writers on this subject will say of the nineteenth century violins and bows as represented by popular painters at the Royal Academy and other picture shows. They will find the evidence just as conflicting.
Unconvincing and contradictory as the existing records are, they are all we have, and, such as they are, I give a few selected examples.
A form of bow constantly occurring in drawings, etc., from the eighth to the sixteenth centuries, is Fig. 15. It is only slightly suggestive of the Oriental bows.
| FIG. 15. | FIG. 16. | FIG. 17. |
In the ninth century we find a bow (Fig. 16) strongly resembling those of the Saw-oo and Saw-Tai. And from the same century we find a miniature representation of a Crwth player with a bow slightly more distinctive in character (Fig. 17).
Similar bows to the above appear to have been pretty general in the tenth century. In the eleventh century a little more variety is apparent, as will be seen in Fig. 18.