[OE. fiðelere, f. *fiðelian to fiddle, f. *fiðele FIDDLE sb. Cf. ON. fiðlari.] One who fiddles.
1. One who plays on the fiddle; esp. one who does so for hire. Fiddler’s fare, money, pay, wages: see quots. 1597, 1608, a. 1700, 1785.
a. 1100. Ags. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 311. Fidicen, fiðelere.
c. 1330. Arth. & Merl., 6568. Ther were trumpes and fithelers.
1463. Mann. & Househ. Exp., 230. Item, govyn to a fedelere, the sayd day at nyte, iiij.d.
1532. More, Confut. Barnes, VIII. Wks. 735/1. He … fareth as he wer from a frere waxen a fideler.
1597. 1st Pt. Return fr. Parnass., I. i. 380. While I stoode by dreaminge of the goulde of India, he drew mee out twoo leane faces, gave me fidler’s wages, and dismiste mee.
1608. Markham, Dumb Knight, III. Let the world know you haue had more than fidlers fare, for you haue meat, money, and cloth.
1644. Milton, Areop. (Arb.), 50. The villages also must have their visitors to enquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebbeck reads ev’n to the ballatry, and the gammuth of every municipal fidler.
a. 1700. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, Fidlers-pay, Thanks and Wine.
1721. Bolingbroke, in Swift’s Lett. (1766), II. 20. As fiddlers flourish carelessly, before they play a fine air.
1785. Grose, Dict. Vulg. Tongue, Fidler’s money, all sixpences.
1807–8. W. Irving, Salmagundi (1824), 350. The fiddler puts the whole assembly in motion, and directs their movements, like the master of a puppet-show.
1886. Hall Caine, Son of Hagar, II. xvi. The fiddler’s function was at an end for the present.
b. Fiddler’s Green (Naut.): ‘a sailor’s elysium, in which wine, women, and song figure prominently’ (Farmer).
1825. Sporting Mag., XVI. 404. My grannan … used to tell me that animals, when they departed this life, were destined to be fixed in Fidler’s Green.
1836. W. H. Maxwell, Capt. Blake, I. xv. note. In the kingdom of Connaught, it is universally believed that tailors and musicians after death are cantoned in a place called ‘Fiddler’s Green.’
1837. Marryat, Snarleyyow; or The Dog Fiend, ix.
| Says I, Mr Parson, to tell you my mind, | |
| No sailors to knock were ever yet seen, | |
| Those who travel by land may steer ’gainst wind, | |
| But we shape a course for Fidler’s Green. |
1883. J. D. J. Kelly, in Harper’s Mag., LXVII. Aug., 441/2. Legend tells us that one murky southwesterly Saturday night, after unlimited grogs, and just as eight bells were striking, mine ancients, laden with models, stood spectrally out of their club-houses, and taking down the landing-stairs, beat up solemnly for the pilotless narrows which lead to Fiddler’s Green, where all good sailors go.
† 2. A trifler. Obs.
1591. R. Cecil, in Unton’s Corr. (Roxb.), 197. This discorse growes by many fidlers in your cause.
1735. Dyche & Pardon, Dict., Fidler … a trifling, foolish, or impertinent Person.
3. slang. A sixpence.
1885. Household Words, 20 June, 155/2. A more easily explained name [for a sixpence] is a Fiddler … probably from the old custom of each couple at a dance paying the fiddler sixpence.
4. a. See quots. 1750 and 1887. b. A local name for the Sandpiper (Tringoides hypoleucus).
1750. G. Hughes, Barbadoes, 82. Fiddlers. This Fly, in Shape, Colour, and Number of Legs, much resembles a Cock-Roach, except that it is smaller, and longer, in proportion to its Bulk.
1885. Swainson, Prov. Names Brit. Birds, 196. Fiddler (Hebrides).
1887. Kent Gloss., Fiddler, the angel or shark-ray.
c. A small crab of the genus Gelasimus. Also fiddler-crab.
1714. J. Lawson, Carolina, 162. Fidlars are a sort of small Crabs, that lie in Holes in the Marshes.
1867. W. B. Lord, Crab, Shrimp, & Lobster Lore, 29. A ‘Fidler Crab’ (as it is sometimes called from the rapidity with which it works its elbows).
1883. S. L. Clemens [‘Mark Twain’], Life on Mississippi, xlviii. 429. The drainage-ditches were everywhere alive with little crabs—‘fiddlers.’
5. attrib. and Comb., as fiddler lad; fiddler-like adj. and adv.
1824. Scott, Redgauntlet, Let. xii. ‘Deil’s in the fiddler lad’ was muttered from more quarters than one.
1628. Venner, Baths of Bathe (1650), 359. It is Fidler-like.
1660. Howell, Parly of Beasts, 128. He was dismissed Fidler-like, with meat, drink, and money.
