# The devil and the fiddle

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-devil-and-the-fiddle/372838>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 15, 2006, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-devil-and-the-fiddle/372838 "2006-09-15T14:46:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\
**Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-devil-and-the-fiddle/372838/21 "2006-09-16T16:39:53Z")

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From Maximilian Rudwin’s _The Devil in Legend and Literature_ [1931], pp.256-7:

"While the Devil plays all instruments equally well, he seems to prefer the violin. He was said in the Middle Ages to own a violin with which he could set whole cities… to dancing… until they fell dead… The Devil appears in this rôle in the medieval legend of the Pied Piper…

“Satan appears as a fiddler in the poem ‘Der Teuful mit der Geige’ … of the 16th century.”

Rudwin then lists a bunch of 19th-century literary devil/fiddle references to things like the opera _Un Violon du Diable_ (1849) and Benjamin Webster’s “The Devil’s Violin” (1849).

I think **Clairobscur** has it in general; the fiddle just happened to be one of the possibilities that made the leap from an idea in folk culture to Western popular culture in the 19th century, when the image was fixed.

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