crwth
Pluralcrwths
- 1An old stringed instrument linked especially with Wales but once played across Europe, having a vaulted back and six strings the player stops on the fingerboard, sounded by plucking or bowing.
A distant ancestor of the violin, heard in halls long before orchestras existed.
A traveling minstrel carried his crwth from one Welsh court to another.
We find in one period crwths, with the strings twanged with the right hand, and stopped above with the left, being held as we hold a violoncello to-day, but being small, on the lap.
1895, John Frederick Rowbotham, The Troubadours and Courts of LoveNote
English first knew this instrument as the crowd, from Middle English crowde; the Welsh word crwth, its cognate, reinforced and finally displaced it, and both trace to a Proto-Celtic word for "round thing". A crowd in older English can therefore be an instrument, not a throng. John Frederick Rowbotham's The Troubadours and Courts of Love (1895) describes it plucked with the right hand, stopped with the left, and held small on the lap like a cello.
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Origin
This word comes from the earlier English "crowd" (from Middle English "crowde"), reinforced by and related to Welsh "crwth," ultimately from Proto-Celtic *kruttos, meaning "round thing."