Not the least interesting relic of the war that we have seen--one that is most peculiarly blended with the memories of the past--is nothing more nor less than a fiddle. Not even Cremona's far famed violins so cluster with reminiscences and associations as this.
Who does not know that Italy, nay that Florence itself, is the cradle of modern civilization?--that there arose modern painting, poetry, sculpture, literature, philosophy, law, politics, and the opera? We don't know exactly where the fiddle took its origin, but there is no one in Vermont who has not felt its magic power, and who does not associate with its strains the brilliantly lighted ball-room; the array of beauty in all its first ringletted flush and prime; long sleigh rides, thanksgiving dinners, etc., etc. And it is natural that while our boys were lying at Brandy Station, on the Rappahannock, during the gloomy winters of 1864-5, their thoughts should turn towards the more pleasant and festive scenes of their native hills.
"Oh that we had a fiddle!" at length some one exclaimed.
"Well!" said a young farmer from Brattleboro, "I believe boys that I can make you a fiddle."
He had never attempted any thing of the kind in his life.
"Can you?" shouted the boys. "Good! you make one, and we will send to Washington for the strings."
George M. Colt of Company C, 2d Vermont Volunteers, was the one who proposed to make the cheer-giving instrument; and with one hatchet, one jack knife, an old file and a piece of a junk bottle as his only tools, he got a piece of soft maple that grew upon the banks of the Rappahannock, and set to work. The bottom and side rim of the fiddle are made out of one single piece of maple, in the most approved style and form of the ordinary fiddle. It is a complete dug-out. The top is made of pine, which grew in the country. The bow is of maple, the same as the larger part of the shell. The hairs were pulled from the tail of Col. Walbridge's white horse. The glue, some member of the company happened to have with him. And thus, in the course of some five weeks the instrument was completed. And having been wistfully eyed by the men of the company and regiment for a long time, during its construction, the instrument at length gave forth its stirring strains.
Need we tell how one of their comrades was called out of the hospital to give it a trial--how he played for two hours until he was exhausted--how many stag dances it conjured up--to how many head quarters it went of nights in a round of serenades--how it was admired and cherished by the officers, and wondered at by that prince of tacticians and soldiers--General Getty--what charm of other days in the Green Mountains it threw over the tedious, hard fare and hard duty in camp?
We will leave all these things to the imagination of the reader; and he can readily understand that the boys, instead of having a "Fille du Regiment" for their pet and favorite, had a Fiddle of the Regiment.
That fiddle is still extant, in all its native simplicity, without paint or varnish, just as it came from the maker's hands, and the writer of this notice has just come from an inspection of it. It is still in the possession of its maker, Mr. George M. Colt, in Brattleboro, who has been pretty severely dealt with by the war, having been wounded no less than five different times, in as many different battles. In the battle of the Wilderness, some two months after the fiddle was completed, he received a wound in the right arm, under which it has withered and stiffened for life.
But still the fiddle goes, and throws its charm over a pleasant household, of which one or two other old veterans of the earlier regiments of Vermont form a part, and where the notes of a seraphine played by a young lady, mingle their harmony with its memory-stirring strains.
More unpretending heroes we have never seen, and a better sounding fiddle has been seldom heard. But amid the joy and hilarity which its harmony awakens, methinks that there is a wail of death--the roar of battle in its sounds. What a glorious instrument to play "Old John Brown!"--made by one of our laboring men of the North, out of Virginia timber from the banks of the Rappahannock, and consecrated by the blood of many battles!
Source: Vermont Record, March 20, 1866.