THE MINSTREL.--HIS POSITION UNDER THE ANGLO-SAXONS.--THE
NORMAN TROUVERE, MENESTREL, AND JOUGLEUR.--THEIR
CONDITION.--RUTEBEUF.--DIFFERENT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS IN USE AMONG
THE MINSTRELS.--THE BEVERLEY MINSTRELS.
The minstrel acted so very prominent a part in the household and
domestic arrangements during the middle ages, that a volume on the
history of domestic manners would be incomplete without some more
detailed account of his profession than the slight and occasional
notices given in the preceding pages.
Our information relating to the Anglo-Saxon minstrel is very imperfect.
He had two names--_scop_, which meant literally a “maker,” and
belonged probably to the primitive bard or poet; and _glig-man_, or
_gleo-man_, the modern gleeman, which signifies literally a man who
furnished joy or pleasure, and appears to have had a more comprehensive
application, which included all professional performers for other
people’s amusement. In Beowulf (l. 180), the “song of the bard” (_sang
scopes_) is accompanied by the sound of the harp (_hearpan swég_); and
it is probable that the harp was the special instrument of the old
Saxon bard, who chanted the mythic and heroic poems of the race. The
gleemen played on a variety of instruments, and they also exhibited
a variety of other performances for the amusement of the hearers or
spectators. In our engraving from an Anglo-Saxon illumination (p.
37), one of the gleemen is tossing knives and balls, which seems to
have been considered a favourite exhibition of skill down to a much
later period. The early English Rule of Nuns (printed by the Camden
Society) says of the wrathful man, that “he skirmishes before the devil
with knives, and he is his knife-tosser, and plays with swords, and
balances them upon his tongue by the sharp point.” In the Life of
Hereward, the gleeman (whose name is there translated by _joculator_)
is represented as conciliating the favour of the new Norman lords by
mimicking the unrefined manners of the Saxons, and throwing upon them
indecent jests and reproaches. But, in the later Anglo-Saxon period at
least, the words _scop_ and _gleóman_ appear to have been considered
as equivalent; for, in another hall-scene in Beowulf, where the scop
performs his craft, we are told that--
_Leoð wæs asungen,_ _The lay was sung,_
_gleómannes gyd,_ _the gleeman’s recital,_
_gamen eft astáh,_ _pastime began again,_
_beorhtode benc-swég._ _the bench-noise became loud._
--Beowulf, l. 2323.
There is here evidently an intimation of merrier songs than those sung
by the _scop_, and whatever his performances were, they drew a louder
welcome. And in a fragment of another romance which has come down to
us, the gleeman Widseth bears witness to the wandering character of his
class, and enumerates in a long list the various courts of different
chiefs and peoples which he had visited. We learn, also, that among the
Anglo-Saxons there were gleemen attached to the courts or households of
the kings and great chieftains. Under Edward the Confessor, as we learn
from the Domesday Survey, Berdic, the king’s _joculator_, possessed
three villas in Gloucestershire.
On the continent, when we first become acquainted with the history of
the popular literature, we find the minstrels, the representatives
of the ancient bards, appearing as the composers and chanters of the
poems which told the stories of the old heroes of romance, and they
seem also to have been accompanied usually with the harp, or with some
other stringed instrument. They speak of themselves, in these poems, as
wandering about from castle to castle, wherever any feasting was going
on, as being everywhere welcome, and as depending upon the liberality
either of the lord of the feast, or of the guests, for their living.
Occasional complaints would lead us to suppose that this liberality was
not always great, and the poems themselves contain formules of begging
appeals, which are not very dignified or delicate. Thus, in the romance
of “Gui de Bourgogne,” the minstrel interrupts his narrative, to inform
his hearers that “Whoever wishes to hear any more of this poem, must
make haste to open his purse, for it is now high time that he give me
something”--
_Qui or voldra chançon oïr et escouter,_
_Si voist isnelement sa boursse desfermer,_
_Qu’il est hui mès bien tans qu’il me doie doner._
--Gui de Bourgogne, l. 4136.
In like manner, in the romance of “Huon de Bordeaux,” the minstrel,
after having recited nearly five thousand lines, makes his excuse for
discontinuing until another day. He reminds his auditors that it is
near vespers, and that he is weary, and invites them to return next
day after dinner, begging each of them to bring with him a _maille_,
or halfpenny, and complaining of the meanness of those who were
accustomed to give so small a coin as the _poitivine_ “to the courteous
minstrel.” The minstrel seems to have calculated that this hint might
not be sufficient, and that they would require being reminded of it,
for, after some two or three hundred lines of the next day’s recital,
he introduces another formule of appeal to the purses of his hearers.
“Take notice,” he goes on to say, “as may God give me health, I will
immediately put a stop to my song; ... and I at once excommunicate all
those who shall not visit their purses in order to give something to my
wife”--
_Mais saciés bien, se Dix me doinst santé,_
_Ma cançon tost vous ferai desiner;_
_Tous chiaus escumenie_, ...
* * * * *
_Qui n’iront à lour bourses pour ma feme donner._
--Huon de Bordeaux, l. 5482.
These minstrels, too, display great jealousy of one another, and
especially of what they term the new minstrels, exclaiming against the
decadence of the profession.
It would appear, indeed, that these French minstrels, the poets by
profession, who now become known to us by the name of _trouvères_,
or inventors (in the language of the south of France, _trobadors_),
held a position towards the _jougleurs_, or _jogleurs_[25] (from the
Latin _joculatores_, and this again from _jocus_, game), which the
Anglo-Saxon _scop_ held towards the gleeman. Though the mass of the
minstrels did get their living as itinerant songsters, they might be
respectable, and sometimes there was a man of high rank who became a
minstrel for his pleasure; but the jougleurs, as a body, belonged to
the lowest and most degraded class of mediæval society, that of the
ribalds or letchers, and the more respectable minstrels of former
days were probably falling gradually into their ranks. It was the
class which abandoned itself without reserve to the mere amusement
and pleasure of the aristocracy, and it seems to have been greatly
increased by the Crusades, when the jougleurs of the west were brought
into relations with those of the east, and learnt a multitude of
new ways of exciting attention and making mirth, of which they were
previously ignorant. The jougleurs had now become, in addition to their
older accomplishments, magicians and conjurers, and wonderfully skilled
in every description of sleight of hand, and it is from these qualities
that we have derived the modern signification of the word _juggler_.
They had also adopted the profession of the eastern story-tellers, as
well as their stories, which, however, they turned into verse; and they
brought into the west many other exhibitions which did not tend to
raise the standard of western morals.
The character of the minstrels, or jougleurs, their wandering life,
and the ease with which they were admitted everywhere, caused them to
be employed extensively as spies, and as bearers of secret news, and
led people to adopt the disguise of a minstrel, as one which enabled
them to pass through difficulties unobserved and unchallenged. In
the story of Eustace the monk, when Eustace sought to escape from
England, to avoid the pursuit of king John, he took a fiddle and a
bow (a fiddlestick), and dressed himself as a minstrel, and in this
garb he arrived at the coast, and, finding a merchant ready to sail,
entered the ship with him. But the steersman, who did not recognise
the minstrel as one of the passengers, ordered him out. Eustace
expostulated, represented that he was a minstrel, and, after some
dispute, the steersman, who seems to have had some suspicions either
of his disguise or of his skill, concluded by putting the question,
“At all events, if thou knowest any song, friend, let us have it.”
The monk was not skilled in singing, but he replied boldly, “Know I
one? Yea! of Agoulant, and Aymon, or of Blonchadin, or of Florence of
Rome (these were all early metrical romances); there is not a song in
the whole world but I know it. I should be delighted, no doubt, to
afford you amusement; but, in truth, the sea frightens me so much at
present, that I could not sing a song worth hearing.” He was allowed
to pass. Some of those who adopted the disguise of the jougleur were
better able to sustain it, and minstrelsy became considered as a polite
accomplishment, perhaps partly on account of its utility. There is,
in the history of the Fitz-Warines, a remarkable character of this
description named John de Raunpaygne. Fulke Fitz-Warine had formed a
design against his great enemy, Moris Fitz-Roger, and he established
himself, with his fellow outlaws, in the forest near Whittington, in
Shropshire, to watch him. Fulke then called to him John de Raunpaygne.
“John,” said he, “you know enough of minstrelsy and joglery; dare
you go to Whittington, and play before Moris Fitz-Roger, and spy how
things are going on?” “Yea,” said John. He crushed a herb, and put it
in his mouth, and his face began immediately to swell, and became so
discoloured, that his own companions hardly knew him; and he dressed
himself in poor clothes, and “took his box with his instruments
of joglery and a great staff in his hand;” and thus he went to
Whittington, and presented himself at the castle, and said that he
was a jogeleur. The porter carried him to Sir Moris, who received him
well, inquired in the first place for news, and receiving intelligence
which pleased him (it was designedly false), he gave the minstrel a
valuable silver cup as a reward. Now, “John de Raunpaygne was very
ill-favoured in face and body, and on this account the ribalds of the
household made game of him, and treated him roughly, and pulled him by
his hair and by his feet. John raised his staff, and struck a ribald on
the head, that his brain flew into the middle of the place. ‘Wretched
ribald,’ said the lord, ‘what hast thou done?’ ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘for
God’s mercy, I cannot help it; I have a disease which is very grievous,
which you may see by my swollen face. And this disease takes entire
possession of me at certain hours of the day, when I have no power to
govern myself.’ Moris swore a great oath, that if it were not for
the news he had brought, he would have his head cut off immediately.
The jogeleur hastened his departure, for the time he remained there
seemed very long.” The result of this adventure was the attack upon
and slaughter of Moris Fitz-Roger by Fulk Fitz-Warine. Some time after
this, Fulk Fitz-Warine, having recovered his castle of Whittington, was
lamenting over the loss of his friend, Sir Audulf de Bracy, who had
fallen into the hands of king John’s emissaries, and was a prisoner
in Shrewsbury castle, where king John had come to make his temporary
residence, and again asked the aid of John de Raunpaygne, who promised
to make a visit to the king. “John de Raunpaygne knew enough of tabor,
harp, fiddle, citole, and joglery; and he attired himself very richly,
like an earl or baron, and he caused his hair and all his body to be
entirely dyed as black as jet, so that nothing was white except his
teeth. And he hung round his neck a very handsome tabor, and then,
mounting a handsome palfrey, rode through the town of Shrewsbury to
the gate of the castle; and by many a one was he looked at. John came
before the king, and placed himself on his knees, and saluted the king
very courteously. The king returned his salutation, and asked him
whence he came. ‘Sire,’ said he, ‘I am an Ethiopian minstrel, born in
Ethiopia.’ Said the king, ‘Are all the people in your land of your
colour?’ ‘Yea, my lord, man and woman.’ ... John, during the day, made
great minstrelsy of tabor and other instruments. When the king was gone
to bed, Sir Henry de Audeley sent for the black minstrel, and led him
into his chamber. And they made great melody; and when Sir Henry had
drunk well, then he said to a valet, ‘Go and fetch Sir Audulf de Bracy,
whom the king will put to death to-morrow; for he shall have a good
night of it before his death.’ The valet soon brought Sir Audulf into
the chamber. Then they talked and played. John commenced a song which
Sir Audulf used to sing; Sir Audulf raised his head, looked at him full
in the face, and with great difficulty recognised him. Sir Henry asked
for some drink; John was very serviceable, jumped nimbly on his feet,
and served the cup before them all. John was sly, he threw a powder
into the cup, which nobody perceived, for he was a good jogeleur, and
all who drunk became so sleepy that, soon after drinking, they lay
down and fell asleep. John de Raunpaygne and Sir Audulf de Bracy took
the opportunity for making their escape. We have here a mysterious
intimation of the fact that the minstrel was employed also in dark
deeds of poisoning. Still later on in the story of Fulk Fitz-Warine,
the hero himself goes to a tournament in France in disguise, and John
de Raunpaygne resumes his old character of a jougleur.” “John,” says
the narrative, “was very richly attired, and well mounted, and he had
a very rich tabor, and he struck the tabor at the entry to the lifts,
that the hills and valleys rebounded, and the horses became joyful.”
All these anecdotes reveal to us minstrels who were perfectly free, and
wandered from place to place at will; but there were others who were
retained by and in the regular employ of individuals. The king had his
minstrels, and so most of the barons had their household minstrels. In
one of the mediæval Latin stories, current in this country probably as
early as the thirteenth century, we are told that a jougleur (_mimus_
he is called in the Latin, a word used at this time as synonymous with
_joculator_) presented himself at the gate of a certain lord to enter
the hall and eat (for the table in those days was rarely refused to
a minstrel), but he was stopped by the porter, who asked him to what
lord he was attached, evidently thinking, as was thought some three
centuries later, that the treatment merited by the servant depended on
the quality of the master. The minstrel replied that his master was
God. When the porter communicated this response to his churlish lord,
or equally churlish steward, they replied that if he had no other
lord, he should not be admitted there. When the jougleur heard this,
he said that he was the devil’s own servant; whereupon he was received
joyfully, “because he was a good fellow” (_quia bonus socius erat_).
The records of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries contain many
entries of payments to the king’s minstrels, and the names of some of
them are preserved. On great festivals at the king’s court, minstrels
came to seek employment from every part of the world which acknowledged
the reign of feudalism. Four hundred and twenty-six minstrels were
present at the marriage festivities of the princess Margaret, daughter
of Edward I.; and several hundred played before the same monarch at
the Whitsuntide of 1306. This affluence of minstrels gave rise to the
practice of building a large music-gallery at one end of the mediæval
hall, which seems to have been introduced in the fourteenth century. At
this time minstrels were sometimes employed for very singular purposes,
such as for soothing the king when undergoing a disagreeable operation.
We learn from the wardrobe accounts that, in the twenty-fifth year of
the reign of Edward I. (A.D. 1297) twenty shillings, or about
fifteen pounds in modern money, was given to the minstrel of Sir John
Maltravers as a reward for performing before the king while he was bled.
The king’s minstrels, and those of the great lords, were very well
paid, but the great mass of the profession, who depended only on what
they obtained in gifts at each particular feast, which they recklessly
squandered away as soon as they got it, lived a hard as it was a
vagabond life. The king’s minstrels, in the fourteenth century in
England, received from sixpence to sevenpence halfpenny a day, that
is from seven shillings and sixpence to nine shillings and fourpence
halfpenny, during the whole year. On the other hand, Colin Muset, one
of the best of the French song-writers of the thirteenth century,
complains of the want of liberality shown to him by the great baron
before whom he had played on the viol in his hostel, and who had given
him nothing, not even his wages:--
_Sire quens, j’ai vielé_
_Devant vos en vostre ostel;_
_Si ne m’avez riens donné,_
_Ne mes gages acquiter._
And he laments that he is obliged to go home in poverty, because his
wife always received him ill when he returned to her with an empty
purse, whereas, when he carried back his _malle_ well stuffed, he was
covered with caresses by his whole family. The French poet Rutebeuf,
whose works have been collected and published by M. Jubinal, may be
considered as the type of the better class of minstrels at this period,
and he has become an object of especial interest to us in consequence
of the number of his shorter effusions which describe his own position
in life. The first piece in the collection has for its subject his own
poverty. He complains of being reduced to such distress, that he had
been obliged for some time to live upon the generosity of his friends;
that people no longer showed any liberality to poor minstrels; that
he was perishing with cold and hunger; and that he had no other bed
but the bare straw. In another poem, entitled Rutebeuf’s Marriage,
he informs us that his privations were made more painful by the
circumstance of his having a shrew for his wife. In a third he laments
over the loss of the sight of his right eye, and informs us that, among
other misfortunes, his wife had just been delivered of a child, and his
horse had broke its leg, so that, while he had no means of supporting a
nurse for the former, the latter accident had deprived him of the power
of going to any distance to exercise his minstrelsy craft. Rutebeuf
repeats his laments on his extreme poverty in several other pieces,
and they have an echo in those of other minstrels of his age. We find,
in fact, in the verse-writers of the latter half of the thirteenth
century, and in some of those of the fourteenth, a general complaint of
the neglect of the minstrels, and of the degeneracy of minstrelsy. In a
poem against the growing taste for the tabor, printed in M. Jubinal’s
volume, entitled “Jougleurs et Trouvères,” the low state into which the
minstrels’ art had fallen is ascribed to a growing love for instruments
of an undignified character, such as the tabor, which is said to
have been brought to us from the Arabs, and the pipe. If an ignorant
shepherd from the field, says the writer of this poem, but play on the
tabor and pipe, he becomes more popular than the man who plays on the
viol ever so well--
_Quar s’uns bergiers de chans tabore et chalemele,_
_Plus tost est apelé que cil qui bien viele._
Everybody followed the tabor, he says, and the good minstrels were
no longer in vogue, though their fiddles were so much superior to
the flutes, and flajolets (_flajols_), and tabors of the others. He
consoles himself, however, with the reflection that the holy Virgin
Mary never loved the tabor, and that no such vulgar instrument was
admitted at her wedding; while she had in various ways shown her favour
to the jougleurs. “I pray God,” our minstrel continues, “that he will
send mischief to him who first made a tabor, for it is an instrument
which ought to please nobody. No rich man ought to love the sound of a
tabor, which is bad for people’s heads; for, if stretched tight, and
struck hard, it may be heard at half a league’s distance:”--
_Qui primes sist tabor. Diex li envoit contraire!_
_Que c’estrument i est qu’ à nului ne doit plaire._
_Nus riches hom ne doit son de tabour amer._
_Quant il est bien tendu et on le vent hurter,_
_De demie grant lieue le puet-on escouter;_
_Ci a trop mauvès son por son chief conforter._
[Illustration: _No. 124. An Organ Player._]
The musical instruments used by the mediæval gleemen and minstrels
form in themselves a not uninteresting subject. Those enumerated in
the Anglo-Saxon vocabularies are the harp (_hearpe_, _cithara_), the
_byme_, or trumpet, the pipe, “or whistle,” the _fithele_, viol, or
fiddle, the horn, and the trumpet, the latter of which was called in
Anglo-Saxon _truth_ and _særga_. To these we must certainly add a few
others, for the drum or tabor seems to have been in use among them
under some form, as well as the cymbal, hand-bells, lyre struck by a
plectrum, and the organ, which latter was already the favourite church
instrument. A portable organ was in use in the middle ages, of which
we give a figure (No. 124), from a manuscript in the British Museum
of the earlier part of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 14 E. iii.).
This hand-organ was known also by the name of the dulcimer. It occurs
again in the following group (No. 125), taken from a manuscript of the
fourteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Addit. No. 10,293), where
the performer on the dulcimer is accompanied by two other minstrels,
one playing on the bagpipe, the other on the viol or fiddle.
[Illustration: _No. 125. A Group of Minstrels._]
[Illustration: _No. 126. David and his Musicians._]
Each of the figures in this group is dressed in a costume so different
from the others that one might almost suppose them engaged in a
masquerade, and they seem to discountenance the notion that the
minstrels were in the habit of wearing any dress peculiar to their
class. In this respect, their testimony seems to be confirmed by the
circumstance that minstrels are mentioned sometimes as wearing the
dresses which have been given them, among other gifts, as a reward for
their performances. The illuminated letter here introduced (No. 126),
which is taken from a manuscript of the thirteenth century in the
British Museum (MS. Harl. No. 5102), represents king David singing his
psalms to the harp, while three musicians accompany him. The first,
who sits beside him, is playing on the shalm or psaltery, which is
frequently figured in the illuminations of manuscripts. One of the
two upper figures is playing on bells, which also is a description of
music often represented in the illuminations of different periods; and
the other is blowing the horn. These are all instruments of solemn
and ecclesiastical music. In the next cut (No. 127), taken from a
manuscript of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii.), the shalm is
placed in the hands of a nun, while a friar is performing on a rather
singularly shaped cittern, or lute.
[Illustration: _No. 127. Musicians of the Cloister._]
[Illustration: _No. 128. The Angelic Choir._]
[Illustration: _No. 129. An Angel Playing on the Shalm._]
In other manuscripts we find the ordinary musical instruments placed
in the hands of the angels; as in the early fourteenth century MS.
Reg. 2 B. vii., in a representation (copied in our cut No. 128) of the
creation with the morning stars singing together, and all the sons
of God shouting for joy, an angelic choir are making melody on the
trumpet, fiddle, cittern, shalm, and harp. There is another choir of
angels at p. 168 of the same MS., with two citterns and two shalms,
a fiddle and a trumpet. Similar representations occur in the choirs
of churches. In the bosses of the ceiling of Tewkesbury abbey church
we see angels playing the cittern (with a plectrum), the harp (with
its cover seen enveloping the lower half of the instrument), and the
cymbals. In the choir of Lincoln cathedral, some of the series of
angels which fill the spandrels of its arcades, and which have given
to it the name of the angel choir, are playing instruments, such as
the trumpet, double pipe, pipe and tabret, dulcimer, viol and harp, as
if to represent the heavenly choir attuning their praises in harmony
with the human choir below:--“therefore with angels and archangels, and
with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name.”
We will introduce here another drawing of an angelic minstrel (No.
129), playing a shalm, from the Royal MS. 14 E. iii.; others occur at
folio 1 of the same MS. It has been suggested that the band of village
musicians with flute, violin, clarionet, and bass-viol, whom most of
us have seen occupying the singing-gallery of some country church, are
probably not inaccurate representatives of the band of minstrels who
occupied the rood-lofts in mediæval times. In this period of the middle
ages, indeed, music seems to have had a great charm for all classes of
society, and each class appears in turn in the minstrel character in
the illuminations of the manuscripts. Even the shepherds, throughout
the middle ages, seem to have been musical, like the swains of
Theocritus or Virgil; for we constantly find them represented playing
upon instruments; and in confirmation we give a couple of goatherds
(No. 130), from MS. Reg. 2 B. vii. fol. 83, of early fourteenth
century date: they are playing on the pipe and horn. But, besides
these instruments, the bagpipe was also a rustic instrument: there is
a shepherd playing upon one on folio 112 of the same MS. (given in our
cut No. 131): and again, in the early fourteenth century MS. Reg. 2 B.
vi., on the reverse of folio 8, is a group of shepherds, one of whom
plays a small pipe, and another the bagpipes. Chaucer (in the “House of
Fame”) mentions--
_Pipes made of grene corne,_
_As han thise lytel herde gromes,_
_That kepen bestis in the bromes._
It is curious to find that even at so late a period as the reign of
queen Mary, they still officiated at weddings and other merrymakings
in their villages, and even sometimes excited the jealousy of the
professors of the joyous science, as we have seen in the early French
poem against the taborers.
[Illustration: _No. 130. A Group of Shepherds._]
[Illustration: _No. 131. A Bagpiper._]
[Illustration: _No. 132. The Lady and Tambourine._]
[Illustration: _No. 133. A Drummer._]
I give next (cut No. 132) a representation of a female minstrel playing
the tambourine; it is also taken from a MS. of the fourteenth century
(MS. Reg. 2 B. vii. fol. 182).
The earliest instance yet met with of the modern-shaped drum is
contained in the Coronation Book of Richard II., preserved in the
Chapter-house. Westminster, and is represented in the annexed cut (No.
133). This mediæval drummer is clearly intended to be playing on two
drums at once; and, in considering their forms and position, we must
make some allowance for the mediæval neglect of perspective.
[Illustration: _No. 134. Blowing the Trumpet and Playing on the
Cymbals._]
In the mediæval vocabularies we find several lists of musical
instruments then best known. Thus John de Garlande, in the middle of
the thirteenth century, enumerates, as the minstrels who were to be
seen in the houses of the wealthy, individuals who performed on the
instruments which he terms in Latin, _lyra_ (meaning the harp), _tibia_
(the flute), _cornu_ (the horn), _vidula_ (the fiddle), _sistrum_ (the
drum), _giga_ (the gittern), _symphonia_ (a symphony), _psalterium_
(the psaltery), _chorus_, _citola_ (the cittern), _tympanum_ (the
tabor), and _cymbala_ (cymbals). The English glossaries of the
fifteenth century add to these the trumpet, the _ribibe_ (a sort of
fiddle), organs, and the crowd. The forms of these instruments of
various periods will be found in the illustrations which have been
given in the course of the present chapter. It will be well perhaps to
enumerate again the most common; they are the harp, fiddle, cittern
or lute, hand-organ or dulcimer, the shalm or psaltery, the pipe and
tabor, pipes of various sizes played like clarionets, but called
flutes, the double pipe, hand-bells, trumpets and horns, bagpipes,
tambourine, tabret, drum, and cymbals. We give two further groups
of figures in illustration of these instruments, both taken from
the Royal MS. so often quoted, 2 B. vii. In the first (No. 134) we
have a boy (apparently) playing the cymbals; and in the second (No.
135) an example of the double flute, which we have already seen in
Anglo-Saxon manuscripts (see before, pp. 35 and 65), and which appears
to have been one of the musical instruments borrowed immediately from
the Romans. In conclusion of this subject we give a group of musical
instruments (No. 136) from one of the illustrations of the celebrated
book entitled “Der Weise König,” a work of the close of the fifteenth
century.
[Illustration: _No. 135. The Dulcimer and Double Flute._]
[Illustration: _No. 136. Musical Instruments._]
The early commentator on the Dictionarius, or Vocabulary, of John de
Garlande, calls the musical instruments _instrumenta leccatorum_,
(instruments of the letchers or ribalds), and I have already stated
that the minstrels, or jougleurs, were considered as belonging
generally to that degraded class of society. In the vocabularies of
the fifteenth century, they are generally classed under the head
of reprehensible or disgraceful professions, along with ribalds,
heretics, harlots, and so forth. It was the same character which led
them, a little later, to be proscribed in acts of parliament, under
the titles of rogues and vagabonds. In the older poetry, too, they
are often joined with disgraceful epithets. There is a curious early
metrical story, or fabliau, which was made, no doubt, to be recited
by the minstrels themselves, although it throws ridicule on their
profession; it is entitled _Les deux Troveors ribauz_, “the two ribald
trouvères,” and consists in a ludicrous dispute between them on their
qualifications as minstrels. My readers must not suppose that at this
time the reciters of poetry were a different or better class than those
who performed jugglery and low buffoonery--for, in this poem, either
of the two claimants to superiority boasts of his skill equally in
possessing in his memory completely, and being able to recite well, the
early Chansons de Geste, or Carlovingian romances, the later romances
of chivalry, and the fabliaux or metrical stories; in playing upon
the most fashionable musical instruments, such as the citole, the
fiddle, and the _gigue_ (gittern); in performing extraordinary feats
and in sleight of hand; and even in making chaplets of flowers, and in
acting as a spy or as a go-between in love intrigues. No doubt there
were minstrels who kept themselves more respectable, but they were
exceptions to the general character of the class, and were chiefly men
in the service of the king or of the great barons. There appears also
to have been, for a long time, a continued attempt to raise minstrelsy
to a respectable position, and out of this attempt arose, in different
places, companies and guilds. Of these, the most remarkable of which
we have any knowledge in this country, was the ancient fraternity of
minstrels of Beverley, in Yorkshire. When this company originated is
not known; but it was of some consideration and wealth in the reign
of Henry VI., when the church of St. Mary’s, in that town, was built;
for the minstrels gave a pillar to it, on the capital of which a band
of minstrels were sculptured. The cut below (No. 137) is copied from
the engraving of this group, given in Carter’s “Ancient Painting and
Sculpture.” The oldest existing document of the fraternity is a copy
of laws of the time of Philip and Mary, similar to those by which
all trade guilds were governed: their officers were an alderman and
two stewards or seers (_i. e._ searchers); and the only items in
their laws which throw any light upon the history or condition of the
minstrels are--one which requires that they should not take “any new
brother except he be mynstrell to some man of honour or worship, or
waite of some towne corporate or other ancient town, or else of such
honestye and conyng (_knowledge_) as shall be thought laudable and
pleasant to the hearers there;” and another, to the effect that “no
mylner, shepherd, or of other occupation, or husbandman, or husbandman
servant, playing upon pype or other instrument, shall sue (_follow_)
any wedding, or other thing that pertaineth to the said science, except
in his own parish.” Institutions like these, however, had little effect
in counteracting the natural decline of minstrelsy, for the state
of society in which it existed was passing away. It would be curious
to trace the changes in its history by the instruments which became
especially characteristic of the popular jougleur. The harp had given
way to the fiddle, and already, towards the end of the thirteenth
century, the fiddle was yielding its place to the tabor. In the
Anglo-Norman romance of Horn, of the thirteenth century, we are told of
a ribald “who goes to marriages to play on the tabor”--
_A li piert qu’il est las un lechur_
_Ki à ces nocces vient pur juer od tabur_;
and the curious fabliau of the king of England and the jougleur of Ely
describes the latter as carrying his tabor swung to his neck--
_Entour son col porta soun tabour._
[Illustration: _No. 137. The Minstrels of Beverley._]