MINSTRELSY A SUBJECT OF BURLESQUE AND CARICATURE.--CHARACTER
OF THE MINSTRELS.--THEIR JOKES UPON THEMSELVES AND UPON ONE
ANOTHER.--VARIOUS MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS REPRESENTED IN THE
SCULPTURES OF THE MEDIÆVAL ARTISTS.--SIR MATTHEW GOURNAY AND THE
KING OF PORTUGAL.--DISCREDIT OF THE TABOR AND BAGPIPES.--MERMAIDS.
One of the principal classes of the satirists of the middle ages, the
minstrels, or jougleurs, were far from being unamenable to satire
themselves. They belonged generally to a low class of the population,
one that was hardly acknowledged by the law, which merely administered
to the pleasures and amusements of others, and, though sometimes
liberally rewarded, they were objects rather of contempt than of
respect. Of course there were minstrels belonging to a class more
respectable than the others, but these were comparatively few; and the
ordinary minstrel seems to have been simply an unprincipled vagabond,
who hardly possessed any settled resting-place, who wandered about from
place to place, and was not too nice as to the means by which he gained
his living--perhaps fairly represented by the street minstrel, or
mountebank, of the present day. One of his talents was that of mocking
and ridiculing others, and it is not to be wondered at, therefore, if
he sometimes became an object of mockery and ridicule himself. One of
the well-known minstrels of the thirteenth century, Rutebeuf, was, like
many of his fellows, a poet also, and he has left several short pieces
of verse descriptive of himself and of his own mode of life. In one
of these he complains of his poverty, and tells us that the world had
in his time--the reign of St. Louis--become so degenerate, that few
people gave anything to the unfortunate minstrel. According to his own
account, he was without food, and in a fair way towards starvation,
exposed to the cold without sufficient clothing, and with nothing but
straw for his bed.
_Je touz de froit, de fain baaille,
Dont je suis mors et maubailliz,
Je suis sanz coutes et sans liz;
N'a si povre jusqu'à Senliz.
Sire, si ne sai quel part aille;
Mes costeiz connoit le pailliz,
Et liz de paille n'est pas liz,
Et en mon lit n'a fors la paille._
--Œuvres de Rutebeuf, vol. i. p. 3.
In another poem, Rutebeuf laments that he has rendered his condition
still more miserable by marrying, when he had not wherewith to keep
a wife and family. In a third, he complains that in the midst of his
poverty, his wife has brought him a child to increase his domestic
expenses, while his horse, on which he was accustomed to travel to
places where he might exercise his profession, had broken its leg, and
his nurse was dunning him for money. In addition to all these causes of
grief, he had lost the use of one of his eyes.
_Or a d'enfant géu ma fame;
Mon cheval a brisié la jame
A une lice;
Or veut de l'argent ma norrice,
Qui m'en destraint et me pélice,
For l'enfant pestre._
Throughout his complaint, although he laments over the decline of
liberality among his contemporaries, he nevertheless turns his poverty
into a joke. In several other pieces of verse he speaks in the same
way, half joking and half lamenting over his condition, and he does not
conceal that the love of gambling was one of the causes of it. "The
dice," he says, "have stripped me entirely of my robe; the dice watch
and spy me; it is these which kill me; they assault and ruin me, to my
grief."
_Li dé que li détier ont fet,
M'ont de ma robe tout desfet;
Li dé m'ocient.
Li dé m'aguetent et espient;
Li dé m'assaillent et dessient,
Ce poise moi._--Ib., vol. i. p. 27.
And elsewhere he intimates that what the minstrels sometimes gained
from the lavish generosity of their hearers, soon passed away at the
tavern in dice and drinking.
One of Rutebeuf's contemporaries in the same profession, Colin Muset,
indulges in similar complaints, and speaks bitterly of the want of
generosity displayed by the great barons of his time. In addressing one
of them who had treated him ungenerously, he says, "Sir Count, I have
fiddled before you in your hostel, and you neither gave me a gift, nor
paid me my wages. It is discreditable behaviour. By the duty I owe to
St. Mary, I cannot continue in your service at this rate. My purse is
ill furnished, and my wallet is empty."
_Sire quens, j'ai vielé
Devant vos en vostre ostel;
Si ne m'avez riens donné,
Ne mes gages acquitez,
C'est vilanie.
Foi que doi sainte Marie,
Ensi ne vos sieurré-je mie.
M'aumosnière est mal garnie,
Et ma male mal farsie._
He proceeds to state that when he went home to his wife (for Colin
Muset also was a married minstrel), he was ill received if his purse
and wallet were empty; but it was very different when they were full.
His wife then sprang forward and threw her arms round his neck; she
took his wallet from his horse with alacrity, while his lad conducted
the animal cheerfully to the stable, and his maiden killed a couple of
capons, and prepared them with piquant sauce. His daughter brought a
comb for his hair. "Then," he exclaims, "I am master in my own house."
_Ma fame va destroser
Ma male sans demorer;
Mon garçon va abuvrer
Men cheval et conreer;
Ma pucele va tuer
Deux chapons por deporter
A la sause aillie.
Ma fille m'aporte un pigne
En sa main par cortoisie.
Lors sui de mon ostel sire._
When the minstrels could thus joke upon themselves, we need not be
surprised if they satirised one another. In a poem of the thirteenth
century, entitled "Les deux Troveors Ribauz," two minstrels are
introduced on the stage abusing and insulting one another, and while
indulging in mutual accusations of ignorance in their art, they display
their ignorance at the same time by misquoting the titles of the poems
which they profess to be able to recite. One of them boasts of the
variety of instruments on which he could perform:--
_Je suis jugleres de viele,
Si sai de muse et frestele,
Et de harpes et de chifonie,
De la gigue, de l'armonie,
De l'salteire, et en la rote
Sai-ge bien chanter une note._
It appears, however, that among all these instruments, the viol, or
fiddle, was the one most generally in use.
[Illustration: _No. 118. A Charming Fiddler._]
The mediæval monuments of art abound with burlesques and satires on the
minstrels, whose instruments of music are placed in the hands sometimes
of monsters, and at others in those of animals of a not very refined
character. Our cut No. 118 is taken from a manuscript in the British
Museum (MS. Cotton, Domitian A. ii.), and represents a female minstrel
playing on the fiddle; she has the upper part of a lady, and the lower
parts of a mare, a combination which appears to have been rather
familiar to the imagination of the mediæval artists. In our cut No.
119, which is taken from a copy made by Carter of one of the misereres
in Ely Cathedral, it is not quite clear whether the performer on the
fiddle be a monster or merely a cripple; but perhaps the latter was
intended. The instrument, too, assumes a rather singular form. Our cut
No. 120, also taken from Carter, was furnished by a sculpture in the
church of St. John, at Cirencester, and represents a man performing on
an instrument rather closely resembling the modern hurdy-gurdy, which
is evidently played by turning a handle, and the music is produced by
striking wires or strings inside. The face is evidently intended to be
that of a jovial companion.
[Illustration: _No. 119. A Crippled Minstrel._]
[Illustration: _No. 120. The Hurdy-Gurdy._]
Gluttony was an especial characteristic of that class of society to
which the minstrel belonged, and perhaps this was the idea intended to
be conveyed in the next picture, No. 121, taken from one of the stalls
in Winchester Cathedral, in which a pig is performing on the fiddle,
and appears to be accompanied by a juvenile of the same species of
animal. One of the same stalls, copied in our cut No. 122, represents
a sow performing on another sort of musical instrument, which is not
at all uncommon in mediæval delineations. It is the double pipe or
flute, which was evidently borrowed from the ancients. Minstrelsy was
the usual accompaniment of the mediæval meal, and perhaps this picture
is intended to be a burlesque on that circumstance, as the mother is
playing to her brood while they are feeding. They all seem to listen
quietly, except one, who is evidently much more affected by the music
than his companions. The same instrument is placed in the hands of a
rather jolly-looking female in one of the sculptures of St. John's
Church in Cirencester, copied in our cut No. 123.
[Illustration: _No. 121. A Swinish Minstrel._]
[Illustration: _No. 122. A Musical Mother._]
[Illustration: _No. 123. The Double Flute._]
Although this instrument is rather frequently represented in mediæval
works of art, we have no account of or allusion to it in mediæval
writers; and perhaps it was not held in very high estimation, and was
used only by a low class of performers. As in many other things, the
employment of particular musical instruments was guided, no doubt, by
fashion, new ones coming in as old ones went out. Such was the case
with the instrument which is named in one of the above extracts, and
in some other mediæval writers, a _chiffonie_, and which has been
supposed to be the dulcimer, that had fallen into discredit in the
fourteenth century. This instrument is introduced in a story which is
found in Cuvelier's metrical history of the celebrated warrior Bertrand
du Gueselin. In the course of the war for the expulsion of Pedro the
Cruel from the throne of Castile, an English knight, Sir Matthew
Gournay, was sent as a special ambassador to the court of Portugal. The
Portuguese monarch had in his service two minstrels whose performances
he vaunted greatly, and on whom he let great store, and he insisted
on their performing in the presence of the new ambassador. It turned
out that they played on the instrument just mentioned, and Sir Matthew
Gournay could not refrain from laughing at the performance. When the
king pressed him to give his opinion, he said, with more regard for
truth than politeness, "in France and Normandy, the instruments your
minstrels play upon are regarded with contempt, and are only in use
among beggars and blind people, so that they are popularly called
beggar's instruments." The king, we are told, took great offence at the
bluntness of his English guest.
The fiddle itself appears at this time to have been gradually sinking
in credit, and the poets complained that a degraded taste for more
vulgar musical instruments was introducing itself. Among these we
may mention especially the pipe and tabor. The French antiquary,
M. Jubinal, in a very valuable collection of early popular poetry,
published under the title of "Jongleurs et Trouvères," has printed
a curious poem of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, intended as
a protest against the use of the tabor and the bagpipes, which he
characterises as properly the musical instruments of the peasantry. Yet
people then, he says, were becoming so besotted on such instruments,
that they introduced them in places where better minstrelsy would be
more suitable. The writer thinks that the introduction of so vulgar an
instrument as the tabor into grand festivals could be looked upon in
no other light than as one of the signs which might be expected to be
the precursors of the coming of Antichrist. "If such people are to come
to grand festivals as carry a bushel [_i.e._ a tabor made in the form
of a bushel measure, on the end of which they beat], and make such a
terrible noise, it would seem that Antichrist must now be being born;
people ought to break the head of each of them with a staff."
_Déussent itiels genz venir à bele feste
Qui portent un boissel, qui mainent tel tempeste,
Il samble que Antecrist doie maintenant nestre;
L'en duroit d'un baston chascun brisier la teste._
This satirist adds, as a proof of the contempt in which the Virgin Mary
held such instruments, that she never loved a tabor, or consented to
hear one, and that no tabor was introduced among the minstrelsy at her
espousals. "The gentle mother of God," he says, "loved the sound of the
fiddle," and he goes on to prove her partiality for that instrument by
citing some of her miracles.
_Onques le mère Dieu, qui est virge honorée,
Et est avoec les angles hautement coronée,
N'ama onques tabour, ne point ne li agrée,
N'onques tabour n'i ot quant el fu espousée.
La douce mère Dieu ama son de viele._
[Illustration: _No. 124. The Tabor, or Drum._]
[Illustration: _No. 125. Bruin turned Piper._]
The artist who carved the curious stalls in Henry VII.'s Chapel at
Westminster, seems to have entered fully into the spirit displayed by
this satirist, for in one of them, represented in our cut No. 124, he
has introduced a masked demon playing on the tabor, with an expression
apparently of derision. This tabor presents much the form of a bushel
measure, or rather, perhaps, of a modern drum. It may be remarked that
the drum is, in fact, the same instrument as the tabor, or, at least,
is derived from it, and they were called by the same names, _tabor_
or _tambour_. The English name _drum_, which has equivalents in the
later forms of the Teutonic dialects, perhaps means simply something
which makes a noise, and is not, as far as I know, met with before the
sixteenth century. Another carving of the same series of stalls at
Westminster, copied in our cut No. 125, represents a tame bear playing
on the bagpipes. This is perhaps intended to be at the same time a
satire on the instrument itself, and upon the strange exhibitions of
animals domesticated and taught various singular performances, which
were then so popular.
[Illustration: _No. 126. Royal Minstrelsy._]
In our cut No. 126 we come to the fiddle again, which long sustained
its place in the highest rank of musical instruments. It is taken
from one of the sculptures on the porch of the principal entrance to
the Cathedral of Lyons in France, and represents a mermaid with her
child, listening to the music of the fiddle. She wears a crown, and
is intended, no doubt, to be one of the queens of the sea, and the
introduction of the fiddle under such circumstances can leave no doubt
how highly it was esteemed.
The mermaid is a creature of the imagination, which appears to have
been at all times a favourite object of poetry and legend. It holds
an important place in the mediæval bestiaries, or popular treatises
on natural history, and it has only been expelled from the domains of
science at a comparatively recent date. It still retains its place in
popular legends of our sea-coasts, and more especially in the remoter
parts of our islands. The stories of the merrow, or Irish fairy, hold a
prominent place among my late friend Crofton Croker's "Fairy Legends of
the South of Ireland." The mermaid is also introduced not unfrequently
in mediæval sculpture and carving. Our cut No. 127, representing a
mermaid and a merman, is copied from one of the stalls of Winchester
Cathedral. The usual attributes of the mermaid are a looking-glass and
comb, by the aid of which she is dressing her hair; but here she holds
the comb alone. Her companion, the male, holds a fish, which he appears
to have just caught, in his hand.
[Illustration: _No. 127. Mermaids._]
While, after the fifteenth century the profession of the minstrel
became entirely degraded, and he was looked upon more than ever as a
rogue and vagabond, the fiddle accompanied him, and it long remained,
as it still remains in Ireland, the favourite instrument of the
peasantry. The blind fiddler, even at the present day, is not unknown
in our rural districts. It has always been in England the favourite
instrument of minstrelsy.