the.com/vielle

means A hurdy-gurdy — a stringed instrument whose strings sound not from a bow but from a rosined wheel turned by a hand crank, with a keyboard-like set of tangents stopping the melody string while other strings drone.

from From French 'vielle,' an old word for a bowed or mechanically-sounded stringed instrument, descended from Old French 'viele' — the same root that gives us 'viol' and 'fiddle,' ultimately tangled up in medieval words for stringed instruments in general. The hurdy-gurdy itself is medieval, once called 'organistrum' and played by two people before it shrank to a one-person instrument; the French name simply stuck to the surviving device even as the bow was traded for a crank.