GUITAR FIDDLE (Trou badour Fiddle), a modern name bestowed retrospectively upon certain precursors of the violin, possessing characteristics of both guitar and fiddle. The name "guitar fiddle" is intended to em phasize the fact that the instru ment, in the shape of the guitar, which during the middle ages rep resented the most perfect prin ciple of construction for stringed instruments with necks, adopted at a certain period the use of the A MODERN SIX-STRINGED GUITAR bow from instruments of a less perfect type, the rebab and its hybrids. The use of the bow with the guitar entailed certain structural changes in the instrument. The large central rose sound-hole was replaced by lateral holes of various shapes; the flat bridge, suitable for instruments whose strings were plucked, gave place to the arched bridge required in order to enable the bow to vibrate each string separately; the arched bridge, by rais ing the strings higher above the sound-board, made the stopping of strings on the neck extremely difficult if not impossible—a matter which was adjusted by the addition of a finger-board of suitable shape and dimensions. At this stage the guitar fiddle possesses the essential features of the violin, and may justly claim to be its immediate predecessor, not so much through the viols (which were the outcome of the Minnesinger fiddle with sloping shoulders) as through the intermediary of the Italian lyra, a guitar-shaped bowed instrument with from seven to 12 strings. From such evidence as we now possess, it would seem that the evolution of the early guitar with a neck from the Greek cithara took place under Greek influence in the Christian East (see GUITAR).