Je suis jugleres de viele,
Si sai de muse et frestele,
Et de harpes et de chifonie,
De la gigue, de l’armonie,
De l’salteire, et en la rote
Sai-ge bien chanter une note.
It appears, however, that among all these instruments, the viol, or fiddle, was the one most generally in use.
No. 118. A Charming Fiddler.
The mediæval monuments of art abound with burlesques and satires on the minstrels, whose instruments of music are placed in the hands sometimes of monsters, and at others in those of animals of a not very refined character. 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; but perhaps the latter was intended. The instrument, too, assumes a rather singular form. Our cut No. 120, also taken from Carter, was furnished by a sculpture in the church of St. John, at Cirencester, and represents a man performing on an instrument rather closely resembling the modern hurdy-gurdy, which is evidently played by turning a handle, and the music is produced by striking wires or strings inside. The face is evidently intended to be that of a jovial companion.