The origin of string instruments of the violin family is involved in much obscurity and it would be impossible to discuss here the various theories concerning it which have been stated with more or less plausibility by musical historians.[42] A preponderance of authoritative opinion seems to favor the theory that the direct ancestor of the violin was the Welsh _crwth_, a sort of harp, which seems to have been played with a bow. Venantius Fortunatus (570 A.D.) mentions this instrument in the much quoted lines: _Romanusque lyra plaudit tibi, barbara harpa, Græcus Achillaica, chrotta Britana canat_. (‘The Roman praises thee with the lyre, the barbarian sings to thee with the harp, the Greek with the cither, the Briton with the _crwth_.’) The fact that the old English name for the fiddle was _crowd_ furnishes an etymological argument in favor of the _crwth_. It is, of course, possible that the idea of using a bow with the small harp was first suggested by some instrument already in existence. The Arabs and other peoples had instruments roughly approximating the violin type. One is inclined, however, to the assumption that the violin was not developed directly from any particular instrument, but came into being rather through the evolution of an idea with which various races experimented independently and simultaneously. [Illustration] Ignace Paderewski. _After a photo from life (1915)._ The immediate forerunner of the violin seems to have been the rebec, of which there is a drawing in an extant manuscript of the ninth century. The Benedictine monk Ofried, in his _Liber Evangeliorum_ of about the same period, mentions the fidula as one of the two bowed instruments then in use, though to what extent the fidula differed from the rebec we are unable to ascertain. In the psalm-book of Notker (d. 1022) there is also a figure of a rebec and a bow. Drawings, written references and bas-reliefs enable us to follow the development of the violin clearly enough from this time on. In the abbey of St. Georges de Boscherville, Normandy, there is preserved a bas-relief which shows a girl dancing on her head to the accompaniment of a band which includes two instruments of the violin type, played with the bow. The _Nibelungen Lied_ speaks of a fiddler who ‘wielded a fiddle-bow, broad and long like a sword,’ and although this epic was completed in the twelfth century it is probably safe to antedate the reference considerably. There is in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris a crowned figure with a four-stringed violin, and in the Abbey of St. Germain des Près there is a similar relic showing a man with a five-stringed violin and a bow. Both date from the eleventh century. From these and similar evidences it is plain that a violin of a rudimentary type was used extensively in the eleventh century. Its musical possibilities must have been very slight, and probably it was