The fiddle

Pavao Treporić

Prnjavor, 1830
wood (maple), leather
turning, carving, tanning

 

length of the instrument = 60 cm
body = 17 x 25 cm
length of the neck = 35 cm

 

POH-416ab/1920
The Collection of Musical instruments by Franjo Ksaver Kuhač

Description

This instrument’s neck and resonant body are made of one piece of maple wood, and the resonant body is covered with an animal skin (usually sheepskin or rabbit skin).

Note

The fiddle usually accompany poems with oral tradition, such as heroic or epic poems. In his early writings, Kuhač also mentions beggar poems were accompanied by the gusle which tells us something about the context and the guslar himself.

The oldest type of the gusle as we know them today was made of maple wood, therefore Kuhač writes that old folk songs always mention “maple fiddle.”