Beneath the minstrel in his elaborate stockings lies a picture of a comfortable, pleasant-looking old gentleman wearing a crown upon his head, and scraping what looks uncommonly like an attempt at the Stradivarius model. This figure (Fig. 7) taken from a bas-relief which was once in the Chapel of St Georges de Boscerville, Normandy--built in 1066--and now preserved in the museum at Rouen, is perhaps the oldest known representation of such a shaped viol extant. Monsieur Fetis, speaking of this figure in his “Histoire General de la Musique,” describes it as a “two-stringed rubebe held between the knees of the person who plays upon it with a bow.”
[Illustration: Fig. 7 FIGURE FROM ST GEORGES DE BOSCERVILLE (11th century)]
Now the archæologist who seeks for truth among the relics of ancient musical instruments is greeted with serious difficulties. He finds on one side of him a “mountain of names,” and on the other side of him a “mountain of musical instruments.” In his hand he grasps bewildering allusions to these in poetry and prose, while sculptural representations, pictures, and drawings flit before his eyes. He holds a bit here, in his endeavour to unite the mountains, snatches a fragment there, and thus it is that we find so many contradictory assertions among authorities on the subject.
[Illustration: Fig. 8 BAS-RELIEF FROM COLOGNE MUSEUM (12th century)]
Monsieur Laurent Grillét asserts that this Boscerville instrument is not a rubebe, as Monsieur Fetis says, but a rote, while the latter’s theory that the rote was a direct descendant of the lyre, and was played by plucking the strings, has been borne out by Mr Heron Allen. An authority of the period, Jerome of Moravia, who wrote his “De cæntiâ Artes Musiciea” in 1274, and dedicated it to Gregory X., speaks of the rubebe as a two-stringed instrument played with a bow and tuned thus:
Unfortunately he does not illustrate his text, but the depth of pitch given by him would indicate an instrument of larger proportions than the one held by the Boscerville figure. In any case, whether this be the instrument indicated by Jerome or not, he has distinctly described the existence of a bass species of viol at that date, and our next picture might certainly be taken as an illustration of his description, giving licence of course, to the third string. This bas-relief in marble (Fig. 8) is preserved in the museum at Cologne, and, looked at with a twentieth-century eye, is wonderfully replete with omens. Observe the bridge and its position: the sound holes in their approved place: the manner in which the sounding-board joins the neck: the excellent fingerboard and tailpiece. All these items, combined with its size, might easily allow it to be the rubebe of Jerome de Moravia and if one supposes this to be so, it is not amiss to suggest that the Boscerville instrument is also a rubebe, which experience enlarged in the following century to the size before us.