Story of the Flute
Instruments, 1780) says that King Francis I. of France directed in 1534 that each band of one thousand men should have four drums and two fifes. Fifes were subsequently allotted to the Swiss companies only, and they disappeared from the French army altogether for some time, but were restored by Napoleon. They are no longer used by the French troops. It is to be noted that A. de Vigny omits "the ear-piercing fife" altogether in his translation of Othello. The instrument was first used in the English army in the reign of Henry VIII. who sent to Vienna for fifes. He had a fifer named Jacques, and another named Oliver, who performed at the King's funeral in 1547. The royal fifer and drummer were paid 45s. for their livery in 1532; in 1555 the King's fifers were Henry Ball and Thomas Curson. "Ffyffers" are included in the muster-roll of the London Train bands in 1539; and the Privy Council Acts, 1548, provide for four drums and two fifes, and one John Pretre is named as fifer. Fifes are often mentioned in Elizabethan literature (where they are sometimes called "Whiffles"), almost always in connection with drums, trumpets, and soldiers. In Barret's Theoricke and Practike of Modern Warres (1598) "drumes and phifes" are mentioned. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), says "the trumpet, drum, and fife are soldiers' instruments." Francis Markham, in his Five Decades of Epistles of War (1622), says he knew no more sweet and solemn melody than that which drums and fifes afforded, but elsewhere he disapproves of the military use of the fife,
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