crowder
nounEtymology From Middle English crowdere; equivalent to crowd + -er.
1
One who plays on a crwth (Welsh string instrument); a fiddler.
- Certainly, I must confess my own barbarousness, I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder […]a. 1587 (date written), Phillip Sidney [i.e., Philip Sidney], An Apologie for Poetrie. […], London: […] [James Roberts] for Henry Olney, […], published 1595, →OCLC; republished as Edward Arber, editor, An Apologie for Poetrie (English Reprints), London: [Alexander Murray & Son], 1 April 1868, →OCLC:
- This comparison is all the more relevant as Uthr Ben represents himself in the Taliessin poem as bard, harper, piper, crowder —in a word, seven-score professionals all in one, an idea to be faintly traced in the Mabinogi of Branwen, when it makes Brân, on his expedition to Ireland, wade across with the musicians of his court on his shoulders1888, John Rhŷs, Celtic Heathendom, Lecture V:
1 more example
- When Johann of Hembach was scarcely more than a child, his witch mother took him to the nocturnal assembly of demons and, because he was so clever a crowder, ordered him to play his kit and to climb up a tree from which he could be heard better.1929, by Francesco Maria Guazzo, translated by Edward Allen Ashwin, Compendium Maleficarum, Book 1/Chapter 12:
- Derived terms
- Crewther, Crowder, Crother, Crowther, MacWhirter, MacWhorter