The Devilish Violin
- fiona flint books
- Feb 17
- 3 min read
In the 1870s, itinerant violin players were a common sight in public spaces. As street performers, they were a traditional part of society and a source of local news and popular music. They generally came from less affluent backgrounds. For many in working-class communities, playing a musical instrument was a potential route out of poverty. Their living could be precarious, however. As well as collecting donations from passersby, they might make money from selling ballads and, in the countryside, they accepted hospitality from farmers.
The Cumberland Bard
Jimmy Dyer was one such. An itinerant singer and ballad seller, he sang traditional folk tunes and original ballads about notable individuals and incidents. He went door to door, as pedlars did, at the time, and would have been considered a tramp or a tinker. He had a whiskery face and shabby clothes. He picked up the violin while tramping with a volunteer band and had a knack for it. He appears in census records as a ‘poet’ or ‘musician’ and in the newspapers in reports about fairs and race days. He travelled about northern Cumbria, trading fireside entertainment for hot meals at farmhouses.
The Swaffham Gypsy
Champion boxer Jem Mace was given a violin and started playing it at ten. His father had combined itinerant work as a blacksmith with playing the fiddle at local fairs and Jem inherited his talent. He left home in his teens, earning a living busking and playing at weddings, and was known as an excellent musician. Thugs smashed his fiddle while he was playing outside a Great Yarmouth pub when he was about 20, however, leaving him unable to work, so he turned to bare-knuckle prize fighting instead. At one point he combined his twin talents, signing up with a small circus to take care of any disruptive intruders and entertaining the crowds on his fiddle. Jem was fascinated by Romany music and dancing, spending time at gypsy camps, and was later known in boxing circles as the Swaffham Gypsy. He had no Romany heritage himself, but took up the travelling lifestyle.
Circus Musicians
Violinists were often part of comedic musical acts, playing comical mistakes, alongside other instruments. As part of a clown duo or a variety act, the violin could be used to make silly sounds or humorous skits. A Victorian circus violinist might provide slapstick entertainment in the form of musical accompaniment for sideshow acts featuring dwarf performers, for example. The Hulines, a famous family of musical clowns in the 1870s, were known for their comical fiddling, juggling, and pantomime.
Street Musicians
Wilkie Collins' novel The Fallen Leaves mentions an old couple who were street musicians. They would vary their music according the audience, singing hymns in the fine streets and comic songs in the poor. They took in a young homeless child who brought in 'plenty of halfpence' standing barefoot on the pavement. In return, the girl 'had bread and apples for supper, and a nice little corner under the staircase, to sleep in'. Eventually, the old man and his wife went to prison and she ran off with the fiddle to make a living as a street musician herself. Unprotected on the streets, however, her instrument was smashed up and she was forced into prostitution to survive.
Dance Musicians
Thomas Hardy'a short story The Fiddler of the Reels features a charismatic fiddle-player called "Mop" because of his long hair. Both his appearance and fiddle-playing are irresistably attractive to young ladies. One woman is so 'thrilled' by the 'witchery' of his old violin that she loses 'her power of independent will'. Eventually, she is the only person left dancing and only stops when she faints. When Mop disappears, it is supposed he has emigrated to America, with the child he has fascinated away from its mother...
"no doubt, finding the girl a highly desirable companion when he had trained her to keep him by her earnings as a dancer."
Hardy came from a musical family and was himself a good violinist. The family dance tunes have names commemorating great historical events and figures or are concerned with love and romance.
Read more about ...
Comments