Page:The story of the flute (IA storyofflute1914fitz).djvu/38



the extinction of the ancient Egyptians. Greeks, and Romans there comes a gap in the history of the flute. We hear nothing of it for several centuries, till it appears in the form of the flute-douce, or flute-à-bec, so called from the resemblance of the mouth-piece to the beak of a bird—the direct descendant of the ancient whistle-flute. The number of finger-holes varied from three upwards. (See Figs. 9 and 10.) There were many varieties of this instrument, the English one being called Recorder. This name, rendered familiar by the famous passage in Hamlet (iii. 2)—which, by the way, one learned commentator explains as referring to "the legal official of a city" (!), who in thieves' slang is known as "The Flute"—is derived from an obsolete use of the verb "to record" as applied to the singing of birds: "The nightingale records again What thou dost primely sing" (Browne's Shepherd's Pipe ii. 75). Early writers have spoken of it as "the English flute" (a term still