Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to take liberties with a woman; cits. 1673 and 1983 are double entendres.

1600–4		Chapman Bussy D’Ambois III ii: My chastity ... you shall neither riddle nor fiddle.
1611		J. Cook Greenes Tu Quoque Scene x: You come And fiddle heere, and keepe a coile in verse.
1625		Massinger Unnatural Combat IV ii: O Sir, you may in publique pay for the fidling You had in private.
1661		‘Jovial Lover’ in Ebsworth Merry Drollery Compleat (1875) 10: I courted a riddle, she fancied a fiddle, The tune does run still in my brain.
1673		Wycherley Gentleman Dancing-Master I i: Your Dancing-masters and Barbers are such finical smooth-tongu’d, tatling Fellows, and if you set ’em once a talking, they’ll ne’re a done, no more than when you set ’em a fidling.
1680		‘On Several Women about Town’ in Wilson Court Satires of the Restoration (1976) 32: There’s commonly fiddlers as soon as ’tis dark.
1929		in Randolph & Legman Ozark Folksongs and Folklore (1992) I 113: There was a jolly tinker, an’ he come from France, / An’ all that he could do was to fiddle, fuck an’ dance.
1938		Max Miller ‘She Shall Have Music’ 🎵 When she goes upstairs to do her daily dozen / I’ll fiddle away there / With her pretty cousin.
1953		W. Eyster Far from the Customary Skies 39: He’d fiddled with some ’uns dah-h-ter.
1964		in E. Cray Erotic Muse (1992) 203: Some were fiddling, some were fie-deling, / Some were fucking on the bar room floor, / But I was up in the northeast corner / Putting it to the Winnipeg whore.
1983		(con. 1940s–60s) Hogbotel & ffuckes ‘Three Prominent Bastards’ in More Snatches and Lays 72: And she liked my father’s fiddling – and I am the result.

2. a euph. for some form of oath, e.g. damned adj. (1)to hell with...! under hell n.

1843		R.S. Surtees Handley Cross (1854) 121: ‘I’ll have a fire lighted directly’ [...] ‘Fiddle the fire!’ exclaimed Mr Jorrocks.
1851		R.S. Surtees Young Tom Hall (1926) 105: ‘Oh, colonel, you are much better without brandy,’ exclaimed his wife [...] ‘You be fiddled [...] you be fiddled; d’ye think I don’t know what agrees with me better than you?’.

3. to have sexual intercourse.

1863

Criminal Life (NY) 19 Dec. n.p.: Kate Ely says she will fiddle with any man as much as she likes.

4. to abuse sexually, usu. a child, thus fiddler, a child molester.

1980		(con. 1966) W. Sherman Times Square 23: The mandatory ‘come shot,’ showing sperm splashing [...] was still four years away, as was the day of the famous ‘Pork Girl,’ the Danish star who fiddled with pigs and horses.
2001		N. Griffiths Sheepshagger 220: I reckon that yer was some sort of abuse [...] Some, y’know, fuckin sexual stuff, likes. Kiddie fiddling.
2012		(con. 1943) G.S. Manson Irish Fandango [ebook] ‘He was a fiddler [...] a molester’.