_crwth_ we give an illustration of it (Fig. 30). Edward Jones, in his “Musical and poetical relicks of the Welsh bards,” records that the Welsh had before this kind of _crwth_ a three-stringed one called “Crwth Trithant,” which was, he says, “a sort of violin, or more properly a rebeck.” The three-stringed _crwth_ was chiefly used by the inferior class of bards; and was probably the Moorish fiddle which is still the favourite instrument of the itinerant bards of the Bretons in France, who call it _rébek_. The Bretons, it will be remembered, are close kinsmen of the Welsh. A player on the _crwth_ or _crowd_ (a crowder) from a bas-relief on the under part of the seats of the choir in Worcester cathedral dates from the latter part of the fourteenth century.[5] It was probably identical with the _rotta_ of the same century on the continent. [Illustration: FIG. 30.――CRWTH. Welsh. 13th century. L. 22 in., W. 9½ in. No. 175-’82. Victoria and Albert Museum.] An interesting drawing of an Anglo-Saxon fiddle――or _fithele_, as it was called――is given in a manuscript of the eleventh century in the British Museum (Cotton, Tiberius, c. 6). The instrument is of a pear shape, with four strings, and the bridge is not indicated. A German fiddle of the ninth century, called _lyra_, copied by Gerbert from the manuscripts of St. Blasius, has only one string. Other records of the employment of the fiddle-bow in Germany in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are not wanting. For instance, in the famous “Nibelungenlied” Volker is described as wielding the fiddle-bow not less dexterously than the sword. And in “Chronicon picturatum Brunswicense” of the year 1203, the following miraculous sign is recorded as having occurred in the village of Ossemer: “On Wednesday in Whitsunweek, while the parson was fiddling to his peasants who were dancing, there came a flash of lightning and struck the parson’s arm which held the fiddle-bow, and killed twenty-four people on the spot.”