My secretary’s husband (Tevya) repairs violins as one of his many hobbies. There is a tradition(?) of marking on the inside of the back of the violin when you open it. Usually, just your name and date but sometimes information about the repair. It sort of makes a “running record” of the violin’s history.
At any rate, Tevya opened a violin with what he thought was French writing inside. His wife copied it down and, thinking I knew French, asked if I could translate it.
I don’t know French.
This is not a detriment, in that I don’t think the writing is French. I’m going for Latin.
I’ll reproduce it here.
VIVA FVI + VI-SYLVIS
DEO VI MORT VI
+ CE- DVL
What does it mean? My many years of Spanish (not French) gives me some ideas, but there on ONLY guesses.
That translation can’t be quite right. I wasn’t sure if securi meant “untroubled” or “ax”, and I ended up using it in both senses! Well, it’s something along those lines anyway.
O.K., so it looks like your secretary has transcribed a couple of the letters wrong. It probably reads something like (after converting the V’s to the U’s that we would today use in Latin writing):
VIVA FUI IN SYLVIS
DEO IN MORTUI
CE- DUL
It’s still not clear what that last line is supposed to say.
More info that may be helpful…
I just spoke with my secretary who said that she thinks the violin is probably from the early 1800s. This gets me to thinking that the person who scratched this in the violin probably didn’t know latin but perhaps knew a bit of the poem to which bibliophage referred. I think this due to the last line. I wonder if
+ CE- DVL
is his attempt to replicate bibliophage’s last line i.e.;
+ CE- (incorrect for "cano") DVL (replaced as DUL for "DUL(ce)")