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When Mona ran from the tinkers, they all pursued her: she heard their feet behind her and even a hasty snatch scraped on a fiddle, and then she heard a laugh from the tinker’s wife.

This is from “The Story of Mona Sheehy” by Lord Dunsany.(1939)
I can’t understand the meaning of the sentence below.

a hasty snatch scraped on a fiddle

Before the scene above, The tinkers were playing their fiddles around her.

I am glad if someone would kindly teach me.

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A snatch in this context is a short part of something, for example a piece of music. A hasty snatch would be a hurriedly-played short piece of music.

Scrape can mean this:

to (cause to) rub against a surface so that slight damage or an unpleasant noise is produced

A violin is played by rubbing the bow against the strings: to say scraped on a fiddle would suggest that, in this case, the sound was not pleasant.

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  • JavaLatte, thank you for your answer. It is so helpful!
    – Hiroshi Inagaki
    Commented Apr 12, 2020 at 4:33

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