So after a few days of eying my fiddle from across the room, tentatively picking it up, making a few notes and putting it back down, I decided to try playing a couple of tunes by ear - ones that I've been playing on banjo and/or mandolin for at least a few years, and know like the back of my hand: Soldier's Joy and Angeline the Baker

Well, duh... the simplest possible melodies of both of those tunes just fall right off the fingerboard, and can be played with just the sort of back-and-forth bowing you'd expect.

I sounded like hell, but being so familiar with the tunes, I didn't have to search very much for the right notes... and even with my squeaky, off kilter playing, those simple quarter-note melodies sounded better than they ever do on Mandolin, which has no sustain to speak of.

Knowing a bunch of fiddle tunes before taking up the fiddle is probably going to be a big help.

"So many people get into problems and give up when they try to teach themselves to play the fiddle - so, I wondered, would a few words of advice help some to enjoy playing the fiddle and fewer would give up in disgust?"

A nice selection of tutorials (mostly text/image based) answering a lot of basic questions.