scrapegut

English

Etymology

scrape +‎ gut (“intestines of an animal used to make strings”)

Noun

scrapegut (plural scrapeguts)

1. (obsolete) A fiddler.
   • 1837, John Gibson Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart‎^[1], volume 1, pages 151–152:

     His father met him with some impatient questions as to what he had been living on so long, for the old man well knew how scantily his pocket was supplied. "Pretty much like the young ravens," answered he; "I only wished I had been as good a player on the flute as poor George Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield. If I had his art, I should like nothing better than to tramp like him from cottage to cottage over the world."―"I doubt," said the grave Clerk to the Signet, "I greatly doubt, sir, you were born for nae better than a gangrel scrape-gut."

   • 1862 September 6, “Paganini's Ghost”, in The Musical World, volume 40, number 36, page 565:

     I was known in the whole street as crins crins, and scouted by the neighbours with the nickname of "Racleur de boyaux," terms equivalent in English to "Scrapegut."