It doesn't rule out a possibility, that this term could be borrowed
from fiddlers world thou.
As I said there is no bibliography given, so it's difficult to check
that data out, but I cited it as one of possible hypothesis.
JL
W dniu 2010-12-27 17:29, howard posner pisze:
On Dec 27, 2010, at 6:51 AM, Roman Turovsky wrote:
That's tasty food for thought to catgut integralists on this list, and a bite
out
of their ideal of authenticity.
I already imagine Dan Larson chasing a suitable kitty, because Anthony Hind has
just ordered a set.
RT
Morris' pseudo-etymological conjecture (hardly unique to him) may be plausible
for fiddlers, but any lutenist who could manage to make his instrument sound
like a cat of any kind would have my enduring respect.
A thousand pardons if I've asked this before, but is string material called
"cat" gut in French, German, or Italian?
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jaroslaw Lipski"<jaroslawlip...@wp.pl>
To:<lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Monday, December 27, 2010 9:34 AM
Subject: [LUTE] catgut
Although this subject was discussed couple of month ago, quite unexpectedly I found an interesting
information in a book on cats which casts some new light on this term. In "Cat watching" Desmond
Morris asks why sheep gut should be perversely referred to as catgut, and suggests that the clue lies in the
earliest use of the term. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, one author wrote of fiddlers
"tickling the dryed gutts of a mewing cat". Later we hear of a man upset "at every twang of
the cat-gut, as if he heard at the moment the wailing of the helpless animal that had been sacrificed to
harmony". These references come from a period when domestic cats were all too often the victims of
persecution and torture, and the sound of squealing cats was not unfamiliar to human ears. In addition, there
was the noise of the caterwauling at times when feral tomcats were arguing over females in heat. Together,
these characteristic feline sounds provided the obvious basis for a!
!
comparison with the din created by inexpert musicians scraping at their
stringed instruments. In the imaginations of the tormented listeners, the
inappropriate sheep gut became transformed into the appropriate catgut - a
vivid fiction to replace a dull fact (as he suggests).
Hmm.......quite interesting...though he didn't enclose any bibliography (pity!).
Best wishes for the coming New Year!
Jaroslaw Lipski
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