s_, Fagotte or Bombardi, as our German ancestors
termed them, before music was clothed in Italian and French style, are no
longer in use" (Eisel wrote in 1738) "and therefore it is unnecessary to
waste paper on them."[14] This refers, of course, to the _bombard_ or bass
pommer, the extraordinarily long instruments which Schnitzer made so
successfully. From this it would seem that our bassoon was not of German
origin. In the meanwhile we get a clue to the early history of the pommer
in transition, but we find it under a different name in no way connected
with _fagotto_. In order to shorten the unwieldy proportions of the tenor
pommer in C, and to increase its portability, it was constructed out of a
block of wood of rather more than double the diameter of the pommer, in
which two bores were cut, communicating at the bottom of the instrument
which was flat. The bell and the crook containing the double reed
mouthpiece were side by side at the top. This instrument, which had six
holes in front and one at the back as well as two keys, was known as the
_dulceian, dolcian, doucaine_, and also in France as _courtaud_ and in
England as the _curtail_, _curtal_,[15] _curtoll_, &c., being mentioned in
1582--"The common bleting musick of ye Drone, Hobius (Hautboy) and
Curtoll." The next step in the evolution produced the double curtail, a
converted bass pommer an octave below the single curtail and therefore
identical in pitch as in construction with the early fagotto in C. The
instrument is shown in fig. 2, the reproduction of a drawing in the MS. of
_The Academy of Armoury_ by Randle Holme,[16] written some time before
1688. At the side of the drawing is the following description: "A double
curtaile.[17] This is double the bigness of the single, mentioned ch. xvi.
n. 6" (the MS. begins at ch. xvii. of bk. 3) "and is played 8 notes deeper.
It is as it were 2 pipes fixed in on(e) thick bass pipe, one much longer
than the other, from the top of the lower comes a crooked pipe of brass in
which is fixed a reed, through it the wind passeth to make the instrument
make a sound. It hath 6 holes on the outside and one on that side next the
man or back part and 2 brass keys, the highest called double _La sol re_,
and the other double _B mi_."

We may therefore conclude that the satirical name _fagotto_, presumably
bestowed in Italy, since the French equivalent _fagot_ was never used for
the _basson_, was not necessarily applied to the new form