[1] As bearing upon this question may be mentioned the fact that the
crow of Australia (_C. australis_) is divisible into two forms or
races, one having the irides white, the other of a dark colour. It is
stated that they keep apart and do not intermix.
CROWBERRY, or CRAKEBERRY, the English name for a low-growing heath-like
shrub, found on heaths and rocks in Scotland, Ireland and mountainous
parts of England. It is known botanically as _Empetrum nigrum_, and has
slender, wiry, spreading branches covered with short, narrow, stiff
leaves, the margins of which are recurved so as to form a hollow
cylinder concealing the hairy under face of the leaf--a device to avoid
excessive loss of water from the leaf under the exposed conditions in
which the plant grows. The minute flowers are succeeded by black,
edible, berry-like fruits, one-fourth to one-third of an inch in
diameter. The plant has a wide distribution, occurring in suitable
localities throughout the north temperate zone, and on the Andes of
South America.
CROWD, CROUTH, CROWTH (Welsh _crwth_; Fr. _crout_; Ger. _Chrotta_,
_Hrotta_), a medieval stringed instrument derived from the lyre,
characterized by a sound-chest having a vaulted back and an open space
left at each side of the strings to allow the hand to pass through in
order to stop the strings on the finger-board. The Welsh crwth, which
survived until the end of the 18th century, is best represented by a
specimen of that date preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and
described and illustrated by Carl Engel.[1] The instrument consists of a
rectangular sound-chest 22 in. long, 9(1/2) in. wide and 2 in. deep; the
body is scooped out of a single block, the flat belly being glued on.
Right through the sound-chest on each side of the finger-board is the
characteristic open space left for the hand to pass through. There are
two circular sound-holes; the left foot of the flat bridge, which lies
obliquely across the belly, passes through the left sound-hole and rests
inside on the back of the instrument. Six catgut strings fastened to a
tail-piece are wound round pegs at the top of the crwth; four of these
strings lie over the sound-board and bridge, and are set in vibration by
means of a bow, while the two others, used as drones and stretched
across the left-hand aperture, are twanged by the thumb of the left
hand. The shape and shallowness of the bridge make it impossible to
sound a single string with the bow; the arrangement of the strings
suggests that they were intended to be sounded in pairs. The instrument
is tuned thus: [Music notes].
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Welsh Crwth, 18th century.]
At the beginning of the 19th century, William Bingley[2] heard a Welsh
peasant playing national airs on a crwth strung as follows:--[Music
notes]. Sir John Hawkins[3] relates that in his time there was still a
Welshman living in Anglesea who understood how to play the crwth
according to traditional usage. Edward Jones[4] and Daines
Barrington[5] both give an account of the Welsh crwth of the 18th
century which agrees substantially with Engel's; the illustration
communicated by Daines Barrington shows the strings of the crwth drawn
through holes at the top, and fastened on the back, as on the Persian
rebab and other Oriental stringed instruments. On these somewhat
scanty authentic records of the instrument, several historians of
music have based an illogical claim that the crwth, or rather chrotta
or rotta, mentioned by Venantius Fortunatus as a British instrument,
was the Welsh crwth as it was known in the 18th century, and was the
earliest bowed instrument, and therefore the ancestor of the violin.
The lines of Fortunatus, who was bishop of Poictiers during the second
half of the 6th century, ran thus:--[6]
"Romanusque lyra, plaudat tibi Barbarus harpa,
Graecus Achilliaca, chrotta Britanna canat."
The bow is not mentioned by Fortunatus, and there is no ground
whatever for believing that the Welsh crwth was played with a bow in
the 6th century, or indeed for several centuries after. The stringing
of the Welsh crwth with the two drone strings still twanged, the form
of the body without incurvations, the flat bridge which rendered
bowing, even in the most highly developed specimens of the 18th
century, a difficult task, together with what is known of the early
history of the chrotta and rotta derived from the lyre and cithara and
like them twanged by fingers or plectrum, all make the claim
untenable. Carl Engel was probably the first to expose the fallacy in
his work on the violin.[7]
British lexicographers all agree in deriving the words crwth, crowd
and other forms of the name, from some word meaning a bulging
protuberant bellying form, while in German the etymology of the word
_Chrotta_ is given as _Chrota_ or _Chreta_, the O.H.G. for _Krote_ =
toad, _Schildkrote_ = tortoise. This word _Chrotta_ was undoubtedly
the German equivalent term for the lyre of Hermes, having as back a
tortoise-shell, [Greek: chelys] in Greek and _testudo_ in Latin.
Chrotta was also spelt _hrotta_, and it is easy to see how this became
rotta. A thoughtful and suggestive treatment of the whole subject will
be found in Engel's work, to which reference has been made. Just as
the lyre and cithara, which appeared to be similar to the casual
observer, and are indeed still confused at the present day, were
instruments differing essentially in construction[8]; so there were,
during the early middle ages, while lyre and cithara were still in
transition, two types of chrotta or rotta. (1) The rotta or improved
cithara had a body either rectangular with the corners rounded, or
guitar-shaped with incurvations, back and sound-board being nearly or
quite flat, joined as in the cithara by ribs or sides. This rotta must
be reckoned among the early ancestors of the violin before the advent
of the bow; it was known both as rotta and cithara, and with a neck
added it became the guitar-fiddle. (2) The tortoise or lyre chrotta
consisted of a protuberant, very convex back cut out of a block of
wood, to which was glued a flat sound-board, at first like the lyre,
without intermediary ribs. This instrument became the crwth, and there
was no further development. The first step in the transition of both
lyre and cithara was the incorporation of arms and cross-bar into the
body, the same outline being preserved; the second step was the
addition of a finger-board against which the strings were stopped,
thus increasing the compass while restricting the number of strings to
three or four; the third step, observed only in the rotta-cithara,
consisted in the addition of a neck,[9] as in the guitar. The crwth,
crowd, crouth did not undergo this third transition even when the bow
was used to set the strings in vibration.
[Illustration: Drawn from a plate in Auguste de Bastard's _Peintures
et ornements de la bible de Charles le Chauve_.