Wednesday 8 May 1661
...
To-day I received a letter from my uncle, to beg an old fiddle of me for my Cozen Perkin, the miller, whose mill the wind hath lately broke down, and now he hath nothing to live by but fiddling, and he must needs have it against Whitsuntide to play to the country girls; but it vexed me to see how my uncle writes to me, as if he were not able to buy him one...

How much of music was traditionally for fun, and how much for a desperate living? Clearly Perkin wouldn't normally depend o his fiddling for a living, and didn't seem to play it for fun (otherwise he'd have had one). What kind of facility could the dancers have expected from an unpractised fiddler? And where did the country girls get their fiddlers when Perkin's mill was working?