Chapter IX

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._

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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._