e says, "You must be _Very Careful_ (now, in your first beginning) to
get a _Good Habit_; so that you _stop close to your Fretts_, _and never
upon any Frett_; _and ever_, _with the very End of your Finger_; except
when a _Cross_, _or Full Stop_ is to be performed" (p. 99).

[Picture: Plate III. The Crwth]

Bowed Instruments.

Mr Galpin (p. 75) gives a figure of a man playing a Crowd with a bow,
instead of plucking the strings with the fingers as shown in sculptured
Irish Crosses. What makes the figure so especially interesting, is that
there is clearly no means of _stopping_ the strings, _i.e._, of altering
the length of the vibrating region, and therefore altering the pitch. No
one, I fancy, would have guessed that the bow was of more ancient lineage
than the fiddle. The finger-board, which transforms the instrument into
an undeniable relative of the violin, is known to have existed in the
thirteenth century. It is a striking fact that what is practically a
cruit or rotte survived in use until the nineteenth century in this
country, in the form of the Welsh _crwth_ or crowd shown on Plate III.
There is a specimen dated 1742 in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The
crwth here figured was made last century by Owain Tyddwr of Dolgelly, an
old man who remembered the instrument as it was in his younger days, and
took great pleasure in its reconstruction.

The crwth is followed by the rebec, which most of us know better from
Milton's lines--

"When the merry bells ring round
And the jocund rebecks sound"--

than in any more practical manner. It had a certain resemblance to the
lute in its pear-shaped outline and its convex or rounded sound-box, but
differs from that instrument in being played with a bow. Mr Galpin
quotes very appropriately the name of one of the country actors in _A
Midsummer Night's Dream_--Hugh Rebeck--as suggesting that an everyday
audience was familiar with it.

_Viols_.--The only surviving instrument of this class is the double bass,
which is "still frequently made with the flat back and sloping shoulders
of its departed predecessors." The bass viol was also known as the Viola
da Gamba, and this was Sir Andrew Aguecheek's instrument, who was said to
play on the "Viol de Gamboys." These instruments--bass and treble--had
six strings, and were provided with frets like the guitar. Their tone is
described as "soft and slightly reedy or nasal, but very penetr