Minstrel

“ The sound of mirth and revelry is heard;
The minstrels strike the harp, and proudly raise
The song of triumph; round the cheerful board
Are gallant warriors! many a one is there,
Whose fame were fitting theme for minstrel song. ”

“ Here's my last coin, minstrel, for that song."
The minstrel laughed, throwing back his curly head and showing his white and pearly teeth.
"I pity thee, man-at-arms. 'Tis better to be a bird in the bush than in a cage. But this coin is heavy and I owe thee change. To-night, then, if thou art on the castle walls I'll come and sing to thee."
"It's a bargain!" and homeward rode the man in armour, clanking and clashing, and in his hoarse voice making vague shouts after bits of the carol that still haunted him, wondering meanwhile if the minstrel really would come. ”

“ At that moment a fine courtier pushed in between the pair.
“Your majesty, your fair hand was promised me for this dance,” he reminded her; and with a slight, imperial bow to the young minstrel, the Queen of Scots swept away on the arm of her partner.
And then a great horror of remorse struck coldly to her heart. Oh, what had she done? Betrayed her heart to the man who loved her so well, but whom to love in return was to doom to a cruel death. Oh, horror of horrors! ”

“ He was quite insensible when he was taken out of the morass and carried to the palace. The princess at once recognised him to be the minstrel who had before visited Ireland, and hoped that his birth was sufficiently good to enable him to win the prize. The queen gave him a sleeping potion, and told him to keep quiet. Then taking her daughter into the next room, she showed her the horrible tongue of the lind-worm, and the sword with which the creature was slain.
“Look,” she said, “the minstrel is the real hero of this adventure, and not that cowardly sewer.” ”

“ Only the minstrel with his big lute goes from land to land and from prince to prince. Only He knows who is stingy and who is generous. May you always have minstrels singing and playing in your presence. ”

“ E'en the oak, his sole shelter, rude winter decays,
And the wild flowers he sung are laid scentless and pale.
Too oft thus in misery, the minstrel must pine;
Neglected by those whom his song wont to cheer,
They think not, alas! as they view his decline,
That his heart still can feel, and his eye shed a tear.
Yet sweet are the pleasures that spring from his woes,
And which souls that are songless can never enjoy;
They know not his joy, for each sweet strain that flows
Twines a wreath round his name time can never destroy.
Sing on, then, sweet bard! ”

“ The person of a minstrel was sacred, and base and barbarian the man would have been accounted, who did not venerate him that sang the heroic and the tender lay, the magic strains of chivalry, and could shed a romantic lustre over fierce wars and faithful loves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The morning is breaking, the world is so wide,
In valleys and mountains does shelter abide,
⁠The villagers kindness are showing;
A minstrel, thus long he must wander and stride,
⁠His beard long and longer is growing ”

“ Being a favorite minstrel in hall and bower, the knights and ladies sent him many entreaties to return; and finding their solicitations were all in vain, they tried their utmost to appease the anger of his lady-love. She at length relented so far as to promise him pardon, whenever a hundred brave knights, and a hundred beautiful dames, who had sworn eternal love to each other, should kneel before her, and with clasped hands supplicate mercy for their minstrel. A hundred brace of lovers performed the required ceremony, and the troubadour was pardoned. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What is more, it shows that women were now accredited minstrels. When Edward II. this year (1316) solemnised the feast of Pentecost, and sat at table in royal state in the Great Hall at Westminster, attended by the peers of the realm, a certain woman, dressed in the habit of a minstrel, riding on a great horse, trapped in the minstrel fashion, entered the hall, and going round the several tables, acting the part of a minstrel, at length mounted the steps to the royal table, on which she deposited a letter. ”

“ This was the incurable ruin of the minstrel folk [195] . And even that life of the road, so alluring to the fever in the blood, must have been a hard one in the rigours of an English climate. To tramp long miles in wind and rain, to stand wet to the skin and hungry and footsore, making the slow bourgeois laugh while the heart was bitter within; such must have been the daily fate of many amongst the humbler minstrels at least [196] . And at the end to die like a dog in a ditch, under the ban of the Church and with the prospect of eternal damnation before the soul. ”

“ They will never know me, in the world, having seen me only as a mendicant Friar at the door of the Count's castle. I will alter the cut of my beard, and will appear among them from the other side, representing myself as a minstrel or a troubadour from the Holy Land. Never fear that I cannot play my part, and even if I be suspected, I shall have a way to save myself from any danger. Surely there can be no harm come to an unoffending old minstrel. ”

“ The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone,
⁠In the ranks of death you'll find him
His father's sword he has girded on,
⁠And his wild harp slung behind him. ”

“ You see the minstrel business is changing. The basis of minstrelsy will always be that which it is and has been, but you can't hand them the same things they've been accepting the past forty years and expect them to enjoy and buy it. The farce comedy, the musical show are virtually minstrel shows. Based upon music and dancing, they produce about the same stuff the minstrels do."
"Well Alfred, we hear a great deal about the old black-face minstrels. Some people say they like them best."
"That's true, Uncle Henry. You can't gainsay it. Some people like the old-fashioned cooking the best. ”

“ Nevertheless, the antithesis may easily be pushed too far. After all, the minstrels were entertainers, and therefore their business was to entertain. Did the lord yawn over a gest or a saintly legend? the discreet minstrel would be well advised to [Pg 67] drop high art, and to substitute some less exacting, even if less refined fashion of passing the time. The instincts of boor and baron were not then, of course, so far apart as they are nowadays. And as a matter of fact we find many of the most eminent minstrels boasting of the width and variety of their accomplishments. ”

“ Where the Minstrel [1] may find his own semblance pourtray'd;
The red fires that gleam on the summit are those
That first on his own inmost spirit have preyed.
Ah, deeply the Minstrel has felt all he sings,
Every passion he paints his own bosom has known ”

“ For strife comes with manhood, and waking with day.
—Sir Walter Scott. THE MINSTREL’S SONG
Once in the olden time a king called his heralds together to hear his bidding. And all the swift runners gathered before the king, each with a trumpet in his hand. And the king sent them forth into every part of the kingdom to sound their trumpets and to call aloud:—
“Hear, O ye minstrels! Our gracious king bids ye come to his court and play before the queen.”
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The minstrels were men who went about from castle to castle and from palace to cot, singing beautiful songs and playing on harps. ”

“ One of the sons descends the steps, pushes aside the sheep-skin, and leads the traveller in. This one says he is the minstrel. What joy in the family! The blind minstrel, who will sing the most exciting ballads and tell the most marvellous tales. He is welcomed by all; only the young bride steals out of the room—she may not remain in a stranger's presence. The lively girls want to hear a story at once ”

“ The earl did not refuse, you may be sure, and the next morning there was a quiet, solemn marriage in the sick-room, where Lady Edith Chilton gave heart and hand to Douglas North, and so ended the Minstrel’s Curse. Old Katharine was there, weeping for blended joy and sorrow—joy that the curse was void forever, sorrow that bonny Douglas North must die and leave his young bride desolate.
But physicians are not always infallible, or perhaps love has some potent power that can conquer death. ”

“ The minstrel of a noble house was distinguished by bearing the badge of his lord attached to a silver chain, and just as in later times the players who did not bear the name of some courtier were the subjects of parliamentary enactments, so the unattached minstrels were treated as vagrants. Besides the minstrels of great lords, there were others attached to important cities. ”

“ For daily entertainment, every castle of any pretension had its own minstrel or minstrels, whilst in the smaller castles a wandering singer was warmly welcomed. Sometimes the lady gave audience to a poet, who read his latest idyll, a minstrel, to the accompaniment of his viol, singing the interspersed lyrics. Such a scene may be found depicted in miniatures, and suggests how such a story as "Aucassin and Nicolette," and many another, partly in prose, partly in verse, was rendered. ”

“ The Minstrel fell!—but the foeman's chain
Could not bring his proud soul under;
The harp he loved ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder;
And said, "No chains shall sully thee,
"Thou soul of love and bravery!
"Thy songs were made for the pure and free,
"They shall never sound in slavery." ”

“ I have not therefore thought it needful to inquire whether, in the various passages quoted in these pages, the word minstrel, &c. is always to be understood in its exact and proper meaning of a singer to the harp, &c.
That men of very different arts and talents were included under the common name of minstrels, &c. appears from a variety of authorities. Thus we have menestrels de trompes and menestrels de bouche in the suppl. to Du Cange, c. ”

“ In an age when the Minstrel’s profession was a passport to the presence and protection of the great, and the persons of those who exercised the calling were held sacred even among tribes the least removed from barbarism, the mind must have reached a fearful state of depravity, that could break through those barriers with which the gratitude and veneration of mankind had surrounded the children of genius, and thus immolate at the shrine of an heartless despotism, the innocent and meritorious depositories of a nation’s lore. ”

“ But in society the lackey is better dressed than the minstrel, and insults him with impunity. I am better dressed than the lackey, and insult him with impunity. The porter considers me higher, but the minstrel lower, than himself; when I made the minstrel my companion, he felt that he was on an equality with us both, and behaved rudely. I was impudent to the porter, and the porter acknowledged that he was inferior to me. The waiter was impudent to the minstrel, and the minstrel accepted the fact that he was inferior to the waiter. ”

“ It is not my province to narrate the history of the professional minstrel. It must suffice here to say, that they who commenced like gods, sank in course of time to a very degraded condition. The minstrels certainly belonged to the class of poor jokers about the time the law began to treat them as vagabonds. I can adduce an instance in the case of Richard Sheale, the author of one of the versions of the ballad of ‘Chevy Chace.’ Sheale was a minstrel by profession, and his home was at Tamworth, on the borders of Staffordshire and Warwickshire. ”

“ And, oh, her heart was true to me,
Her Highland Minstrel boy.
Oh, her presence could on every star, 8cc.
I ha’e play’d to ladies, fair and gay,
In mony a southrou hall;
But there was one far, far away,
A world above them all. ”

“ If anything happens to me and I get ruined it's their doings because I could have been with a minstrel troupe. You have to lie more here in a day than I did all the time I was with a minstrel show.
Your very affectionate son,
Alfred Griffith Hatfield.
P. S. I looked at the dictionary. A "gilly" is a man attendant in the Scottish Highlands. A "kid" is a young goat. It don't tell what a "fake" is. Now I know Palmer will have to raise my wages. If Pap agrees to paint a panorama and take Lin along you can get Sis Minks to work for you. ”

“ 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 jogleurs25 (from the Latin joculatores, 178 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 ”