The little hand-cranked organ has many names.  In the English
speaking lands it is the barrel organ, monkey organ, busker organ,
grind organ.  In Germany it is the Walzenorgel (cylinder or barrel
organ) or Drehorgel (crank-organ) or Leierkasten (the fiddle box).

And in France it is called the "orgue de Barbarie", meaning the
barbaric organ -- the organ of savageness or brutality.  Why?

I found the answer in a 1997 article by the Institute of Political
Studies of Lyons, France, which is evidently under contract to publish
articles on the Internet for the "Scientific and Technological Mission
of the Embassy of France to the United States".

The regular column, "Parler au quotidien" (speaking in everyday life),
talks about the word for the church organ, l'orgue, and notes that the
French word is especially interesting from the linguistic point of view
since it is one of the rare words (along with love and delight) which
changes gender (from masculine to feminine) when it becomes plural.
The article also mentions smaller organs:

 "One sometimes finds some smaller examples like the harmonium,
  petite organ in miniature, and the Organ of Barbarism.
  Why Barbarism?

 "At first, it reflects a confusion: one spoke of the 'orgue de
  Barberi' [the organ built by Giovanni Barberi, a manufacturer of
  Modena, Italy].  But since it was the instrument of the itinerant
  musician, an instrument of the streets, played very often by
  strangers, a certain distrust accompanied its good-humored nature.
  It seemed to come from afar; it became the 'orgue de Barbarie',
  the organ of Barbarism."

As an aside, the English adjective 'barbarous' is from the Greek
and Latin word 'barbarus', meaning foreign or strange, and
related to the Arabic word 'Barbary'.  The invaders from the north
coast of Africa were the Barbars, and they called their land
Barbary (Barbarie); to the Greeks and Romans these savage invaders
were barbarians.  One could argue that the French term also means
"the organ from Barbary" except that no organ makers practiced the
craft in that land.

The barrel organ cranked by itinerant entertainers played the same
song over and over; the motion of the crank resembled that of a
grinding mill, hence the term "grind organ", and the operator was
the "grinder".  Before the crank organ was developed the street
entertainers turned the crank of the droning wheel fiddle from the
Middle Ages -- the Leierkasten or hurdy-gurdy or vielle a roue --
and so these names also were transferred to the barrel organ.

Thus most of the slang names for the jolly crank organ reflect its
earlier image as an instrument cranked by foreign beggars which played
the same song again and again.  Nowadays the little organ plays
a variety of songs stored on punched cardboard or music rolls or
microchip, and hopefully the organ grinder is viewed more kindly.

Ref.:  http://www.chilton.com/paq/archive/PAQ-97-210.html  &

http://iep.univ-lyon2.fr/Ressources/Documents/News/rfi-juil97/RFI.29JUIL.html

Robbie Rhodes
Etiwanda, CA