A part was written for this instrument in Bach's St.
Matthew Passion, and a number of celebrated performers on it are
recorded in the eighteenth century. Two of these were ladies, Mrs. Sarah
Ottey and Miss Ford.
Violers and fiddlers formed an essential part of the retinue of many
monarchs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Charles II., of
England, had twenty-four at his court, with red bonnets and flaunting
livery, who played for him while he was dining according to the custom
he had known at the French court during his exile. Place was grudgingly
yielded to the violin by friends of the less insistent viol. Butler, in
Hudibras, styled it "a squeaking engine." Earlier writers mention "the
scolding violin," and describing the Maypole dance tell of not hearing
the "minstrelsie for the fiddling." Thus all along its course it has had
its opponents and deriders as well as its friends.
The soft-toned viol had deeply indented sides to permit a free use of
the bow, was mostly supplied with frets like a guitar, and had usually
from five to seven strings.
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