The Fisherman and his Flute which the illustrator to the latter author makes a trumpet. In La Fontaine’s French version the instrument is referred to as a ‘musette’ which, since his fable is titled “The Fishes and the Shepherd who Played the Flute” ("Les poissons et le berger qui joue de la flûte", X.10), must refer to the old piccolo oboe. Nevertheless, it was translated as bagpipe by Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, in her rendering of his poem. La Fontaine had made of the story an artificial pastoral in which Tircis tried to charm the fishes to the hook of the shepherdess Annette but
Flute the word back to the Latin "flare" (to blow, inflate) have been pronounced "phonologically impossible" or "inadmissable". The first known use of the word "flute" was in the 14th century. According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", this was in Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Hous of Fame", c.1380. Today, a musician who plays any instrument in the flute family can be called a flutist (pronounced "FLEW-tist", most common in the US), or flautist (pronounced "FLAW-tist", most common in the UK), or simply a flute player (more neutrally). "Flutist" dates back to at least 1603, the earliest quotation cited by the "Oxford English