case. a succession of them to hand down the art, | character. Colgrin, son of that Ella who was though some particular conjunctures may elected king or leader of the Saxons in the have rendered it more respectable at one time room of Hengist,* was shut up in York, and than another? And this was evidently the closely besieged by Arthur and his Britons. For though much greater honours Baldulph, brother of Colgrin, wanted to gain seem to have been heaped upon the northern access to him, and to apprise him of a reinSealds, in whom the characters of historian. forcement which was coming from Germany. genealogist, poet, and musician, were all He had no other way to accomplish his deunited, than appear to have been paid to the sign, but to assume the character of a MinMinstrels and Harpers (H) of the Anglo- strel. He therefore shaved his head and Saxons, whose talents were chiefly calculated beard, and, dressing himself in the habit of to entertain and divert; while the Scalds pro- that profession, took his harp in his hand. fessed to inform and instruct, and were at In this disguise, he walked up and down once the moralists and theologues of their the trenches without suspicion, playing all Pagan countrymen; yet the Anglo-Saxon the while upon his instrument as a Harper. Minstrels continued to possess no small por- By little and little he advanced near to the tion of public favour; and the arts they pro- walls of the city, and, making himself known fessed were so extremely acceptable to our to the sentinels, was in the night drawn up ancestors, that the word GLEE, which peculi- by a rope. arly denoted their art, continues still in our own language to be of all others the most expressive of that popular mirth and jollity, that strong sensation of delight, which is felt by unpolished and simple minds. (I) II. Having premised these general considerations, I shall now proceed to collect from history such particular incidents as occur on this subject; and, whether the facts themselves are true or not, they are related by authors who lived too near the Saxon times, and had before them too many recent monuments of the Anglo-Saxon nation, not to know what was conformable to the genius and manners of that people; and therefore we may presume, that their relations prove at least the existence of the customs and habits they attribute to our forefathers before the conquest, whatever becomes of the particular incidents and events themselves. If this be admitted, we shall not want sufficient proofs to show that Minstrelsy and Song were not extinct among the Anglo-Saxons; and that the professor of them here, if not quite so respectable a personage as the Danish Scald, was yet highly favoured and protected, and continued still to enjoy considerable privileges. Even so early as the first invasion of Britain by the Saxons, an incident is recorded to have happened, which, if true, shows that the Minstrel or Bard was not unknown Although the above fact comes only from the suspicious pen of Geoffry of Monmouth, (K) the judicious reader will not too hastily reject it; because, if such a fact really happened, it could only be known to us through the medium of the British writers: for the first Saxons, a martial but unlettered people, had no historians of their own; and Geoffry, with all his fables, is allowed to have recorded many true events, that have escaped other annalists. We do not, however, want instances of a less fabulous era, and more indubitable authority: for later history affords us two remarkable facts, (L) which I think clearly show that the same arts of poetry and song, which were so much admired among the Danes, were by no means unknown or neglected in this sister nation: and that the privileges and honours which were so lavishly bestowed upon the Northern Scalds, were not wholly withheld from the Anglo-Saxon Minstrels. Our great King Alfred, who is expressly said to have excelled in music,† being desirous to learn the true situation of the Danish army, which had invaded his realm, assumed the dress and character of a Minstrel ; (M) when, taking his harp, and one of the most trusty of his friends disguised as a servant (for in the early times it was not unusual for a minstrel to have a servant to carry his harp), he went with the utmost security into the Danish *See Rapiu's Hist. by Tindal, fol. 1732, vol. i. p. 36, who year 495. Among this people; and that their princes places the incident here related under the themselves could, upon occasion, assume that By Bale and Spelman. See note (M). † Ibid. camp; and, though he could not but be known | he had lands assigned him for his maintento be a Saxon by his dialect, the character he ance. (Q) had assumed procured him a hospitable reception. He was admitted to entertain the king at table, and stayed among them long enough to contrive that assault which afterwards destroyed them. This was in the year 878. About sixty years after,* a Danish king made use of the same disguise to explore the camp of our King Athelstan. With his harp in his hand, and dressed like a minstrel, (N) Aulaff, king of the Danes, went among the Saxon tents; and, taking his stand near the king's pavilion, began to play, and was immediately admitted. There he entertained Athelstan and his lords with his singing and his music, and was at length dismissed with an honourable reward, though his songs must have discovered him to have been a Dane. (O) Athelstan was saved from the consequences of this stratagem by a soldier, who had observed Aulaff bury the money which had been given him, either from some scruple of honour, or motive of superstition. This occasioned a discovery. Now if the Saxons had not been accustomed to have minstrels of their own, Alfred's assuming so new and unusual a character would have excited suspicions among the Danes. On the other hand, if it had not been customary with the Saxons to show favour and respect to the Danish Scalds, Aulaff would not have ventured himself among them, especially on the eve of a battle. (P) From the uniform procedure then of both these kings, we may fairly conclude that the same mode of entertainment prevailed among both people, and that the minstrel was a privileged character with each. But, if these facts had never existed, it can be proved from undoubted records, that the minstrel was a regular and stated officer in the court of our Anglo-Saxon kings: for in Doomesday Book, Joculator Regis, the King's Minstrel, is expressly mentioned in Gloucestershire; in which county it should seem that * Anno 938. Vid. Rapin, &c. So I think the name should be printed, rather than Anlaff the more usual form (the same traces of the letters express both names in MS.), Aulaff being evidently the genuine modern name Olaff, or Olave, Lat. Olaus. In the old romance of "Horn-Childe" (see vol. iii. p. xxxiii.), the name of the king his father is Allof, which is evidently Ollaf, with the vowels only transposed. III. We have now brought the inquiry down to the Norman Conquest; and as the Normans had been a late colony from Norway and Denmark, where the Scalds had arrived to the highest pitch of credit before Rollo's expedition into France, we cannot doubt but this adventurer, like the other northern princes, had many of these men in his train, who settled with him in his new duchy of Normandy, and left behind them successors in their art: so that, when his descendant, William the Bastard, invaded this kingdom in the following century,* that mode of entertainment could not but be still familiar with the Normans. And that this is not mere conjecture will appear from a remarkable fact, which shows that the arts of poetry and song were still as reputable among the Normans in France, as they had been among their ancestors in the North; and that the profession of Minstrel, like that of Scald, was still aspired to by the most gallant soldiers. In William's army was a valiant warrior, named Taillefer, who was distinguished no less for the minstrel arts. (R) than for his courage and intrepidity. This man asked leave of his commander to begin the onset, and obtained it. He accordingly advanced before the army, and with a loud voice animated his countrymen with songs in praise of Charlemagne and Roland, and other heroes of France; then rushing among the thickest of the English, and valiantly fighting, lost his life. Indeed the Normans were so early distinguished for their minstrel talents, that an eminent French writer (S) makes no scruple to refer to them the origin of all modern poetry, and shows that they were celebrated for their songs near a century before the Troubadours of Provence, who are supposed to have led the way to the poets of Italy, France, and Spain.† We see then that the Norman conquest was rather likely to favour the establishment of the minstrel profession in this kingdom, *Rollo was invested in his new duchy of Normandy, A.D. 912. William invaded England, A.D. 1066. Vid. Hist. des Troubadours, 3 tom." passim; et vid, "Fableaux ou Contes du XII. et du XIII. Siecle, traduits, &c., avec des Notes historiques et critiques, &c., par M. Le Grand. Paris, 1781," 5 tom. 12mo. than to suppress it; and although the favour | unbroken annals of the minstrel art and its of the Norman conquerors would be probably professors, or have sufficient information confined to such of their own countrymen as whether every minstrel or harper composed excelled in the minstrel arts; and in the first himself, or only repeated, the songs he ages after the conquest no other songs would chanted. Some probably did the one, and be listened to by the great nobility, but such some the other: and it would have been wonas were composed in their own Norman derful indeed if men whose peculiar profesFrench: yet as the great mass of the original sion it was, and who devoted their time and inhabitants were not extirpated, these could talents to entertain their hearers with poetical only understand their own native gleemen or compositions, were peculiarly deprived of all minstrels; who must still be allowed to exist, poetical genius themselves, and had been unless it can be proved that they were all under a physical incapacity of composing proscribed and massacred, as it is said the those common popular rhymes which were the Welsh bards were afterwards by the severe usual subjects of their recitation. Whoever policy of King Edward I. But this we know examines any considerable quantity of these, was not the case; and even the cruel attempts finds them in style and colouring as different of that monarch, as we shall see below, proved from the elaborate production of the sedenineffectual. (S 2) tary composer at his desk or in his cell, as the rambling harper or minstrel was remote in his modes of life and habits of thinking from the retired scholar or the solitary monk. (T) The honours shown to the Norman or French minstrels, by our princes and great barons, would naturally have been imitated by their English vassals and tenants, even if no favour or distinction had ever been hown here to the same order of men in the Anglo-Saxon and Danish reigns. So that we cannot doubt but the English harper and songster would, at least in a subordinate degree, enjoy the same kind of honours, and be received with similar respect among the inferior English gentry and populace. I must be allowed therefore to consider them as belonging to the same community, as subordinate members at least of the same college; and therefore, in gleaning the scanty materials for this slight history, I shall collect whatever incidents I can find relating to minstrels and their art, and arrange them, as they occur in our own annals, without distinction; as it will not always be easy to ascertain, from the slight mention of them by our regular historians, whether the artists were Norman or English. For it need not be remarked that subjects of this trivial nature are but incidentally mentioned by our ancient annalists, and were fastidiously rejected by other grave and serious writers; so that, unless they were accidentally connected with such events as became recorded in history, they would pass unnoticed through the lapse of ages, and be as unknown to posterity as other topics relating to the private life and amusements of the greatest nations. On this account it can hardly be expected that we should be able to produce regular and It is well known that on the Continent, whence our Norman nobles came, the Bard who composed, the Harper who played and sang, and even the Dancer and the Mimic, were all considered as of one community, and were even all included under the common name of Minstrels.* I must therefore be allowed the same application of the term here, without being expected to prove that every singer composed, or every composer chanted, his own song; much less that every one excelled in all the arts which were occasionally exercised by some or other of this fraternity. IV. After the Norman Conquest, the first occurrence which I have met with relating to this order of men is the founding of a priory and hospital by one of them: scil. the Priory and Hospital of St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, London, by Royer or Raherus the King's Minstrel, in the third year of King Henry I., A. D. 1102. He was the first prior of his own establishment, and presided over it to the time of his death. (T 2) In the reign of King Henry II., we have upon record the name of Galfrid or Jeffrey, a harper, who in 1180 received a corrody or annuity from the abbey of Hide near Winchester; and, as in the early times every *See note (B) and (A a). . harper was expected to sing, we cannot doubt but this reward was given to him for his music and his songs; which, if they were for the solace of the monks there, we may conclude would be in the English language. (U) Under his romantic son, King Richard I., the Minstrel profession seems to have acquired additional splendour. Richard, who was the great hero of chivalry, was also the distinguished patron of Poets and Minstrels. He was himself of their number, and some of his poems are still extant.* They were no less patronized by his favourites and chief officers. His Chancellor, William Bishop of Ely, is expressly mentioned to have invited Singers and Minstrels from France, whom he loaded with reward; and they in return celebrated him as the most accomplished person in the world. (U 2) This high distinction and regard, although confined perhaps in the first instance to Poets and Songsters of the French nation, must have had a tendency to do honour to poetry and song among all his subjects, and to encourage the cultivation of these arts among the natives; as the indulgent favour shown by the monarch, or his great courtiers, to the Provençal Troubadour, or Norman Rymour, would naturally be imitated by their inferior vassals to the English Gleeman or Minstrel. At more than a century after the conquest, the national distinctions must have begun to decline, and both the Norman and English languages would be heard in the houses of the great; (U 3) so that probably about this æra, or soon after, we are to date that remarkable intercommunity and exchange of each other's compositions, which we discover to have taken place at some early period between the French and English Minstrels; the same set of phrases, the same species of characters, incidents, and adventures, and often the same identical stories, being found in the old metrical romances of both nations. (V) be recorded for the honour of poets and their art. This fact I shall relate in the following words of an ancient writer:* 64 The Englishmen were more than a whole yeare without hearing any tydings of their king, or in what place he was kept prisoner. He had trained up in his court a Rimer or Minstrill,† called Blondell de Nesle: who (so saith the manuscript of old Poesies,‡ and an auncient manuscript French Chronicle) being so long without the sight of his lord, his life seemed wearisome to him, and he became confounded with melancholly. Knowne it was, that he came backe from the Holy Land; but none could tell in what countrey he arrived. Whereupon this Blondel, resolving to make search for him in many countries, but he would heare some newes of him; after expence of divers dayes in travaile, he came to a towne? (by good hap) neere to the castell where his maister King Richard was kept. Of his host he demanded to whom the castell appertained, and the host told him that it belonged to the Duke of Austria. Then he enquired whether there were any prisoners therein detained or no: for alwayes he made such secret questionings wheresoever he came. And the hoste gave answer, there was one onely prisoner, but he knew not what he was, and yet he had bin detained there more than the space of a yeare. When Blondel heard this, he wrought such meanes, that he * Mons. Favine's Theatre of Honour and Knighthood, translated from the French. Lond. 1623, fol. tom. ii. p. 49. An elegant relation of the same event (from the French of Presid. Fauchet's Recueil, &c.) may be seen in " Miscella nies in prose and verse, by Anna Williams, Lond. 1766,” informed, that most of the pieces of that collection were composed under the disadvantage of a total deprivation of sight. 4to. p. 46.-It will excite the reader's admiration to be Favine's words are, "Jongleur appellé Blondiaux de Nesle." Paris, 1620, 4to., p. 1106. But Fauchet, who has given the same story, thus expresses it, “Or ce roy ayant nourri un Menestrel appellé Blondel," &c., liv. 2, p. 92. "Des anciens Poëtes François,"-He is however said to have been another Blondel, not Blondel (or Blondiaux) de Neste; but this no way affects the circumstances of the story. The distinguished service which Richard received from one of his own minstrels, in rescuing him from his cruel and tedious cap-MS. of old Poesies, written about those very times.”— tivity, is a remarkable fact, which ought to See a pathetic song of his in Mr. Walpole's Catalogue of Royal Authors, vol. i. p. 5. The reader will find a translation of it into modern French, in Hist. Literaire des Troubadours, 1774, 3 tom. 12mo. See vol. i. p. 58, where some more of Richard's poetry is translated. In Dr. Burney's Hist. of Music, vol. ii. p. 238, is a poetical version of it in English. This the Author calls in another place, "An ancient From this MS. Favine gives a good account of the taking of Richard by the Duke of Austria, who sold him to the Emperor. As for the MS. chronicle, it is evidently the same that supplied Fauchet with this story. See his "Recueil de l'Origine de la Langue et Poesie Françoise, Ryme, et Romans," &c., Par. 1581. Tribables.-"Retrudi eum præcepi' in Triballis: a quo carcere nullus ante dies istos exivit." Lat. Chron. of Othe of Austria: apud Favin. became acquainted with them of the castell, | abroad and secreted by her French relations as Minstrels doe easily win acquaintance any in Normandy. To discover the place of her where:* but see the king he could not, neither concealment, a knight of the Talbot family understand that it was he. One day he sat spent two years in exploring that province, directly before a window of the castell where at first under the disguise of a pilgrim; till King Richard was kept prisoner, and began having found where she was confined, in to sing a song in French, which King Richard order to gain admittance he assumed the and Blondel had some time composed to- dress and character of a harper, and being a gether. When King Richard heard the song, jocose person exceedingly skilled in the he knew it was Blondel that sung it: and 'gests of the ancients;"* so they called the when Blondel paused at halfe of the song, romances and stories which were the delight the king 'began the other half and completed of that age; he was gladly received into the it.' Thus Blondel won knowledge of the family. Whence he took an opportunity to king his maister, and returning home into carry off the young lady, whom he presented England, made the barons of the countrie to the king; and he bestowed her on his naacquainted where the king was." This hap- tural brother William Longespee (son of fair pened about the year 1193. Rosamond), who became in her right Earl of Salisbury.(V 3) The following old Provençal lines are given as the very original song; which I shall accompany with an imitation offered by Dr. Burney, ii. 237. BLONDEL. Domna vostra beutas Si bel trop affansia Your beauty, lady fair, Yet this I patient see While all are shun'd like me. 66 The next memorable event which I find in history reflects credit on the English Minstrels and this was their contributing to the rescue of one of the great Earls of Chester when besieged by the Welsh. This happened in the reign of King John, and is related to this effect. "Hugh, the first Earl of Chester, in his charter of foundation of St. Werburg's Abbey in that city, had granted such a privilege to No nymph my heart can wound those who should come to Chester fair, that RICHARD. If favour she divide And smiles on all around I'd rather hatred bear Than love with others share. The access which Blondel so readily obtained in the privileged character of a minstrel, is not the only instance upon record of the same nature.(V 2) In this very reign of King Richard I. the young heiress of D'Evereux, Earl of Salisbury, had been carried "Comme Menestrels s'accointent legerement." Favine. Fauchet expresses it in the same manner. + I give this passage corrected; as the English translator of Favine's book appeared here to have mistaken the original: Scil. "Et quant Blondel eut dit la moitie de la Chanson, le roy Richard se prist a dire l'autre moitie et l'acheva." Favine, p. 1106. Fauchet has also expressed it in nearly the same words. Recueil, p. 93. In a little romance or novel, entitled, "La Tour Tenebreuses, et les Jours Lumineux, Contes Angloises, accompagnez d'historiettes, et tirez d'une ancienne chronique composee par Richard, surnomme Coeur de Lion, Roy d'Angleterre," &c. Paris 1705, 12mo.-In the Preface to this romance the Editor has given another song of Blondel de Nesle, as also a copy of the song written by King Richard, and published by Mr. Walpole, mentioned above, yet the two last are not in Provençal like the sonnet printed here; but in the old French, called Language Roman. they should not then be apprehended for theft or any other misdemeanour, except the crime were committed during the fair. This special protection occasioning a multitude of loose people to resort to that fair, was afterwards of signal benefit to one of his successors. For Ranulph, the last Earl of Chester, marching into Wales with a slender attendance, was constrained to retire to his castle of Rothelan, (or Rhuydland) to which the Welsh forthwith laid siege. In this distress he sent for help to the Lord de Lacy, constable of Chester: 'Who, making use of the Minstrells of all sorts, then met at Chester fair: by the allurement of their musick, got together a vast number of such loose people as, by reason of the before specified priviledge, were then in that city; whom he forthwith sent under the 66 The words of the original, viz., "Citharisator homo jocosus in Gestis antiquorum valde peritus," I conceive to give the precise idea of the ancient Minstrel. See note(V 2). That Gesta was appropriated to romantic stories, see note (I) Part IV (1). † See Dugdale, Bar. i. 42, 101, who places it after 13 John, A. D. 1212. See also Plot's Staffordsh. Camden's Britann. (Cheshire.) |