ment in this island, were converted to Chris- | were a Danish people, and their country at

tianity; in proportion as literature prevailed among them, this rude admiration would begin to abate, and poetry would be no longer a peculiar profession. Thus the Poet and the Minstrel early with us became two persons. (D) Poetry was cultivated by men of letters indiscriminately; and many of the most popular rhymes were composed amidst the leisure and retirement of monasteries. But the Minstrels continued a distinct order of men for many ages after the Norman conquest; and got their livelihood by singing verses to the harp at the houses of the great. (E) There they were still hospitably and re- spectfully received, and retained many of the honours shown to their predecessors, the Bards and Scalds. (F) And though, as their art declined, many of them only recited the compositions of others, some of them still composed songs themselves, and all of them could probably invent a few stanzas on occasion. I have no doubt but most of the old heroic Ballads in this collection were composed by this order of men. For although some of the larger metrical romances might come from the pen of the monks or others, yet the smaller narratives were probably composed by the minstrels who sang them. From the amazing variations which occur in different copies of the old pieces, it is evident they made no scruple to alter each other's productions; and the reciter added or omitted whole stanzas, according to his own fancy or convenience.

In the early ages, as was hinted above, the profession of oral itinerant Poet was held in the utmost reverence among all the Danish tribes; and, therefore, we might have concluded, that it was not unknown or unrespected among their Saxon brethren in Britain, even if history had been altogether silent on this subject. The original country of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors is well known to have lien chiefly in the Cimbric Chersonese, in the tracts of land since distinguished by the name of Jutland, Angelen, and Holstein.* The Jutes and Angles in particular, who composed two-thirds of the conquerors of Britain,

*Vid. Chronic. Saxon. à Gibson, p. 12, 13, 4to.-Bed. Hist. Eccles. à Smith, lib. 1, c. 15.—“ Ealdsexe [Regio antiq. Saxonum] in crevice Cimbrica Chersonesi, Holsatiam proprie dictam Dithmarsiam, Stormariam, et Wagriam, complectens." Annot. in Bed. à Smith, p. 52. Et vid. Camdeni Britan.

this day belongs to the crown of Denmark ;* so that when the Danes again infested England, three or four hundred years after, they made war on the descendants of their own ancestors. From this near affinity, we might expect to discover a strong resemblance between both nations in their customs, manners, and even language: and, in fact, we find them to differ no more than would naturally happen between a parent country and its own colonies, that had been severed in a rude uncivilized state, and had dropt all intercourse for three or four centuries: especially if we reflect that the colony here settled had adopted a new religion, extremely opposite in all respects to the ancient Paganism of the mother country; and that even at first, along with the original Angli, had been incorporated a large mixture of Saxons from the neighbouring parts of Germany; and afterwards, among the Danish invaders, had come vast multitudes of adventurers from the more northern parts of Scandinavia. But all these were only different tribes of the same common Teutonic stock, and spoke only different dialects of the same Gothic language.

From this sameness of original and similarity of manners, we might justly have wondered, if a character, so dignified and distinguished among the ancient Danes, as the Scald or Bard, had been totally unknown or unregarded in this sister nation. And, indeed, this argument is so strong, and, at the same time, the early annals of the AngloSaxons are so scanty and defective, (G) that no objections from their silence could be sufficient to overthrow it. For if these popular Bards were confessedly revered and admired in those very countries which the AngloSaxons inhabited before their removal into Britain, and if they were afterwards common and numerous among the other descendants of the same Teutonic ancestors, can we do otherwise than conclude, that men of this order accompanied such tribes as migrated hither; that they afterwards subsisted here, though, perhaps, with less splendour than in the North; and that there never was wanting

"Anglia Vestus, hodie etiam Anglen, sita est inter Saxones et Giotes [Jutos], habens oppidum capitale.. Sleswick." Ethelwerd. lib. 1.

† See Northern Antiquities, &c., vol. i. pag. 7, 8, 185, 250, 260, 261.

Ibid. Preface, p. 26.

a succession of them to hand down the art, though some particular conjunctures may have rendered it more respectable at one time than another? And this was evidently the For though much greater honours seem to have been heaped upon the northern Scalds, in whom the characters of historian. genealogist, poet, and musician, were all united, than appear to have been paid to the Minstrels and Harpers (II) of the AngloSaxons, whose talents were chiefly calculated to entertain and divert; while the Scalds professed to inform and instruct, and were at once the moralists and theologues of their Pagan countrymen; yet the Anglo-Saxon Minstrels continued to possess no small portion of public favour; and the arts they professed were so extremely acceptable to our ancestors, that the word GLEE, which peculiarly 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)

Among this people; and that their princes places the incident here related under the year 495. themselves could, upon occasion, assume that

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 of the Norman conquerors would be probably confined to such of their own countrymen as excelled in the minstrel arts; and in the first ages after the conquest no other songs would be listened to by the great nobility, but such as were composed in their own Norman French: yet as the great mass of the original inhabitants were not extirpated, these could only understand their own native gleemen or minstrels; who must still be allowed to exist, unless it can be proved that they were all proscribed and massacred, as it is said the Welsh bards were afterwards by the severe policy of King Edward I. But this we know was not the case; and even the cruel attempts of that monarch, as we shall see below, proved ineffectual. (S2)

unbroken annals of the minstrel art and its professors, or have sufficient information whether every minstrel or harper composed himself, or only repeated, the songs he chanted. Some probably did the one, and some the other: and it would have been wonderful indeed if men whose peculiar profession it was, and who devoted their time and talents to entertain their hearers with poetical compositions, were peculiarly deprived of all poetical genius themselves, and had been under a physical incapacity of composing those common popular rhymes which were the usual subjects of their recitation. Whoever examines any considerable quantity of these, finds them in style and colouring as different from the elaborate production of the sedentary 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)

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.

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 IV. After the Norman Conquest, the first will not always be easy to ascertain, from the occurrence which I have met with relating slight mention of them by our regular histo-to this order of men is the founding of a rians, whether the artists were Norman or priory and hospital by one of them: scil. the English. For it need not be remarked that Priory and Hospital of St. Bartholomew, in subjects of this trivial nature are but inci- Smithfield, London, by Royer or Raherus the dentally mentioned by our ancient annalists, King's Minstrel, in the third year of King and were fastidiously rejected by other grave Henry I., A. D. 1102. He was the first prior and serious writers; so that, unless they were of his own establishment, and presided over accidentally connected with such events as it to the time of his death. (T 2) 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

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).