Using a hot knife, which I ran between the top and sides, I removed the top. When I first received the violin, I noticed quite a bit of rattling when I moved it around. I expected to find pieces of the instrument, but to my surprise, there were two rattlesnake rattles. I can only guess that they might have added an interesting sympathetic buzzing sound when played at square dances or hoe downs. I put them back in after the repairs were done. (I got an e-mail recently from Tom Buck (tbuck@oklahoma.net) who mentioned that old-time fiddlers in his part of the country did put rattlesnake rattles in their fiddles. Tom implied that it was a superstition to make the fiddles sound better, but might have been started to try to keep spiders out of the inside.)
The soundpost was also in the box. This was a crudely whittled little piece, and I put it back after finishing the repairs. The top was also very crudely whittled. It wasn't carved, or nicely scraped like regular violins. The inside was very rough and unsanded. The grain was sticking straight up like fuzz all over it. This definitely was a folk fiddle, not a violin.