[1] In the same essay Bentham notices the comparative rarity of fictions in Scots law. As to fiction in particular, compared with the work done by it in English law, the use made of it by the Scottish lawyers is next to nothing. No need have they had of any such clumsy instrument. They have two others “of their own making, by which things of the same sort have been done with much less trouble. Nobile officium gives them the creative power of legislation; this and the word desuetude together the annihilative.” And he notices aptly enough that, while the English lawyers declared that James II. had abdicated the throne (which everybody knew to be false), the Scottish lawyers boldly said he had forfeited it.

FIDDES, RICHARD (1671-1725), English divine and historian, was born at Hunmanby and educated at Oxford. He took orders, and obtained the living of Halsham in Holderness in 1696. Owing to ill-health he applied for leave to reside at Wickham, and in 1712 he removed to London on the plea of poverty, intending to pursue a literary career. In London he met Swift, who procured him a chaplaincy at Hull. He also became chaplain to the earl of Oxford. After losing the Hull chaplaincy through a change of ministry in 1714, he devoted himself to writing. His best book is a Life of Cardinal Wolsey (London, 1724), containing documents which are still valuable for reference; of his other writings the Prefatory Epistle containing some remarks to be published on Homer’s Iliad (London, 1714), was occasioned by Pope’s proposed translation of the Iliad, and his Theologia speculativa (London, 1718), earned him the degree of D.D. at Oxford. In his own day he had a considerable reputation as an author and man of learning.

FIDDLE (O. Eng. fithele, fidel, &c., Fr. vièle, viole, violon; M. H. Ger. videle, mod. Ger. Fiedel), a popular term for the violin, derived from the names of certain of its ancestors. The word fiddle antedates the appearance of the violin by several centuries, and in England did not always represent an instrument 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 was evidently a well-known instrument:

“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; it will be found inseparable from that of the violin both as regards the 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 transition—the name of fidiculae (more rarely fidicula), a diminutive form of fides. In Alain de Lille’s De planctu naturae against the word lira stands as equivalent vioel, with the definition “Lira est quoddam genuē citharae vel fitola alioquin de reot. Hoc instrumentum est multum vulgare.” This is a marginal note in writing of the 13th century.[1]

Some of the transitions from fidicula to fiddle are made evident in the accompanying table:

Latinfidiculae
Medieval Latinvitula, fitola.
Frenchvièle, vielle, viole.
Provencalviula.
Spanishviguela, vihuela, vigolo.
Old High Germanfidula.
Middle High Germanvidele.
Germanfiedel, violine.
Italianviola, violino.
Dutchvedel.
Danishfiddel.
Anglo-Saxonfithele.
Old Englishfithele, fythal, fithel, fythylle,
  fidel, fidylle, (south) vithele.