FIDDLE (O. Eng. fithele, fidel, &c., Fr. vide, 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 gentle citharae vel fitola alioquin de reot . Hoc instrumentum est multum vulgare." This is a marginal note in writing of the 13th century.' Some of the transitions from fidicula to fiddle are made evident in the accompanying table: Latin . fidiculae Medieval Latin vitula, fitola . French viole, vielle, viole . Provencal . viula . Spanish viguela, vihuela, vigolo . Old High German . fidula . Middle High German videle .

German fiedel, violine .

Italian viola, violino . Dutch vedel . Danish fiddel . Anglo-Saxon fithele . Old English fithele, fythal, fithel, fythylle, fidel, fidylle, (south) vithele . For the descent of the guitar-fiddle, the first bowed ancestor of the violin, through many transitions from the cithara, see CITHARA, GUITAR and GUITAR-FIDDLE . In the minnesinger and troubadour fiddles, of which evidences abound during the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, are to be observed the structural characteristics of the violin and its ancestors in the course of evolution . The principal of these are first of all the shallow sound.-chest, composed of belly and back, almost flat, connected by ribs (also present in the cithara), with incurvations more or less pronounced, an arched bridge, a finger-board and strings (varying in number), vibrated by means ' See C . E . H. de Coussemaker, Memoire sur Hucbald (Paris, 1841).of a bow . The central rose sound-holes of stringed instruments whose strings are plucked by fingers, or plectrum have given place to smaller lateral sound- holes placed on each side of the strings .

It is in

Germany,' where contemporary drawings of fiddles of the 13th and 14th centuries furnish an authoritative clue, and in France, that the development may best be followed . The German minnesinger fiddle with sloping shoulders was the prototype of the viols, whereas the guitar- fiddle produced the violin From Julius Ruhlmann's Geschichte der through the intermediary of the Bogeninstrumente . Italian bowed Lyra . Minnesinger Fiddle . Germany, 13th Century, from the Manesse The fiddle of the Carolingian MSS . epoch,—such, for instance, as that mentioned by Otfrid of Weissenburg2 in his Harmony of the Gospels (c . 868), " Sih thar ouch al ruarit This orgasm fuarit Lira joh fidula," &c., was in all probability still an instrument whose strings were plucked by the fingers, a cithara in transition . (K .