Curious Flutes
(also used by the ancients) and piccolos were quite common at one period, and Dorus possessed one with gold keys and mountings. It is still frequently used for the headjoint in Germany and Russia. Glass flutes are as old as Mersenne; many such were made in Paris by Breton, and by Laurent about 1806, and in London by Garrett about 1820. Papier-mache and even wax have also been tried, and one Gavin Wilson, a shoemaker in Edinburgh in 1789, says he made a flute of leather! A very peculiar flute, which combined a tobacco-pouch, made from a cocoa-nut and engraved canes, and which formerly belonged to an itinerant musician at Fez in Northern Morocco, was exhibited at South Kensington in 1872. The great John Bunyan when in gaol cut a flute out of the leg of his prison chair; it is a pity that this interesting relic has not been preserved.
In Mediæval Europe one form of flute was known as "Pilgrim staves," and is said (probablyWalking-
Stick Flutes erroneously) to have been so named because they were used by the pilgrims to the shrine of St. James of Compostella; as Southey sings:—
Who on a flute could play;
And thus the merry pilgrim
Had music on his way."
—The Pilgrim to Compostella.
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