CHAPTER III.

1. The British Bards.-II. The Northern Scalds.-III. The Anglo-Saxon Gleemen.IV. The Nature of their Performances.--V. A Royal Player with three Darts.— VI. Bravery of a Minstrel in the Conqueror's Army.-VII. Other Performances ny Gleemen.-VIII. The Harp an Instrument of Music much used by the Saxons. -IX. The Norman Minstrels, and their different Denominations, and professions.-X. Troubadours.-XI. Jestours.-XII. Tales and Manners of the Jesters. -XIII. Further Illustration of their Practices.-XIV. Patronage, Privileges, and Excesses of the Minstrels.-XV. A Guild of Minstrels.-XVI. Abuses and Decline of Minstrelsy.-XVII. Minstrels were Satirists and Flatterers.-XVIII. Anecdotes of offending Minstrels, Women Minstrels.--XIX. The Dress of the Minstrels.-XX. The King of the Minstrels, why so called.-XXI. Rewards given to Minstrels.-XXII. Payments to Minstrels.-XXIII. Wealth of certain Minstrels.-XXIV. Minstrels were sometimes Dancing Masters.

1. THE BRITISH BARDS.

THE Britons were passionately fond of vocal and instrumental music for this reason, the hards, who exhibited in one person the musician and the poet, were held in the highest estimation among them. "These bards," says an early historian, "celebrated the noble actions of illustrious persons in heroic poems which they sang to the sweet sounds of the lyre;" and to this testimony we may add another of equal authority; "The British bards are excellent and melodious poets, and sing their poems, in which they praise some, and censure others, to the music of an instrument resembling a lyre."2 Their songs and their music are said, by the same writer, to have been so exceedingly affecting, that "sometimes when two armies are standing in order of battle, with their swords drawn, and their lances extended upon the point of engaging in a most furious conflict, the poets have stepped in between them, and by their soft and fascinating songs calmed the fury of the warriors, and prevented the bloodshed. Thus, even among barbarians," adds the author, "rage gave way to wisdom, and Mars submitted to the Muses."

1 Ammianus Marcell. lib. xv. cap. 9.

2 Diodorus Siculus, lib. v. cap. 31.

II. THE NORTHERN SCALDS.

The scalds1 were the poets and the musicians of the ancient northern nations; they resembled the bards of the Britons, and were held in equal vencration by their countrymen. The scalds were considered as necessary appendages to royalty, and even the inferior chieftains had their poets to record their actions and indulge their vanity.

III. THE ANGLO-SAXON GLEEMEN.

Upon the establishment of the Saxons in Britain, these poetical musicians were their chief favourites; the courts of the kings, and the residences of the opulent afforded them a constant asylum; their persons were protected, and admission granted to them without the least restraint. In the Anglo-Saxon language they were distinguished by two appellations; the one equivalent to the modern term of gleemen or merry-makers, and the other harpers, derived from the harp, an instrument they usually played upon. Glip or Gligman; hence Gliggamen, glee-games, are properly explained in Somner's Lexicon, by merry tricks, jests, sports, and gambols, which were expressive of their new acquirements: Dearpere, the appellation of harper, was long retained by the English rhymists. The gleemen added mimicry, and other means of promoting mirth to their profession, as well as dancing and tumbling, with sleights of hand, and variety of deceptions to amuse the spectators; it was therefore necessary for them to associate themselves into companies, by which means they were enabled to diversify their performances, and render many of them more surprising through the assistance of their confederates. In Edgar's oration to Dunstan, the mimi, or minstrels, are said to sing and dance; and, in the Saxon canons made in that king's reign, A.D. 960, (Can. 58,) it is ordered that no priest shall be a poet. rceop, or exercise the mimical or histrionical art, in any degree, public or private. Lye renders the words "ne ænige Viran glipige," nec ullo modo scurram agat. Upon this subject we shall have occasion to speak more fully hereafter.

Bartholin de causis contemp. a Danis Mortis, lib. i. cap. 2, et Wormii Lit. Run. ad finim. Spe. Concil. tom. i. p. 455.

IV. NATURE OF THE PERFORMANCES BY THE GLEEMEN.

Representations of some of these pastimes are met with occasionally in the early Latin and Saxon manuscripts; and where they do occur, we uniformly find that the illuminators, being totally ignorant of ancient customs and the habits of foreign nations, have not paid the least regard to propriety in the depicting of either, but substituted those of their own time, and by this means they have, without design on their part, become the communicators of much valuable information. The following observations upon two very early paintings will, I doubt not, in great measure confirm the truth of this assertion.

This engraving represents two persons dancing to the music of the horn and the trumpet, and it does not appear to be a common dance in which they are engaged; on the contrary, their attitudes are such as must have rendered it very difficult to perform. On the next page is a curious specimen of a performer's art.

50. ANGLO SAXON GLEEMAN.-X. CENTURY.

We here see a man throwing three balls and three knives alternately into the air, and catching them one by one as they fall, but returning them again in a regular rotation. To give the greater appearance of difficulty to this feat, it is accompanied with the music of an instrument resembling the modern violin. It is necessary to add, that these two figures, as well as those dancing, previously exhibited, form a part only of two larger paintings, which, in their original state, are placed as frontispieces to the Psalms of David; and in both, the artists have represented that monarch seated upon his throne in the act of playing upon the harp or the lyre, and surrounded by the masters of sacred music. In each the king is depicted considerably larger than the other performers, a compliment usually paid to saints and dignified persons; which absurdity has been frequently practised by the more modern painters. The inferior figures form a sort of border to the sides and bottom of the royal portrait. In addition to the four figures upon the engraving, No. 49, and exclusive of the king, there are four more, all of them instrumental performers; one playing upon the horn, another

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upon the trumpet, and the other two upon a kind of tabor or drum, which, however, is beaten with a single drum-stick: the manuscript in which this illumination is preserved, was written as early as the eighth century, and is in the Cotton Collection at the British Museum. The engraving, No. 50, is from a painting on another manuscript in the same collection,2 more modern than the former by full two centuries, which contains four figures besides the royal psalmist; the two not engraved are musicians: the one is blowing a long trumpet supported by a staff he holds in his left hand, and the other is winding a crooked horn. In a short prologue, immediately preceding the psalms, we read as follows: "David, filius Jesse, in regno suo quatuor elegit qui psalmos fecerunt, id est Asaph, Æman, Æthan, et Idithun;" which may be thus translated literally, " David, the son of Jesse, in his reign elected four persons who composed psalms, that is to say, Asaph, Æman, Ethan, and Idithun." In the painting these four names are separately appropriated, one to each of the four persons there represented; the player upon the violin is called Idithun, and Ethan is tossing up the knives and the balls.

I have been thus particular in describing these curious delineations, because I think they throw much light upon the profession of the Anglo-Saxon gleeman, and prove that his exhibitions were diversified at a very early period; for the reader, I doubt not, will readily agree with me, that dancing and sleights of hand were better calculated for secular pastimes, than for accompaniments to the solemn performances of sacred psalmody. The honest illuminators having no ideas, as I before observed, of foreign or ancient manners, saw not the absurdity of making the Jewish monarch a president over a company of Saxon gleemen; they had heard, no doubt, that these persons. whose names they found recorded in the book of Psalms, were poets and musicians; and therefore naturally concluded that they were gleemen, because they knew no others who performed in that double capacity but the gleemen: they knew also, that these facetious artists were greatly venerated by persons of the highest rank, and their company requested by kings and princes, who richly rewarded them for the exercise of their talents, and for this reason, conceived that they were proper companions for the royal psalmist.