ABSTRACT
Stringed instruments of different sorts and styles played with a bow have existed in Scotland from a very early period. Dr Farmer is of the opinion that the fiddle and the rebec, as well as the psaltery and the gittem were imported from the East by returning Crusaders. Of the early representation of the fiddle, a manuscript said by Dalyell to have belonged to the Abbey of Dunfermline, of date 1400–1500 shows a fiddle-like instrument of apparently two strings being played with a bow by a female musician, together with a player of a timbrel or tambourine, and a female tumbler turning a somersault. Whenever it was that the violin arrived, the Scottish traditional fiddlers were quick to see its possibilities as an instrument for their native folk music in its flexibility and incisive tone quality.
