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.1

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 Anglo-Saxons 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 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 case. 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 (H) of the Angio-Saxons, 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 (1).

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 AngloSaxons; 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 among this people; and that their princes themselves could, upon occasion, assume that character. Colgrin, son of that Ella who was elected king or leader of the Saxons in

1 See Northern Antiquities, &c. Preface, p. xxvi.

the room of Hengist,' was shut up in York, and closely besieged by Arthur and his Britons. Baldulph, brother of Colgrin, wanted to gain access to him, and to apprize him of a reinforcement which was coming from Germany. He had no other way to accomplish his design, but to assume the character of a Minstrel. He therefore shaved his head and beard, and dressing himself in the habit of that profession, took his harp in his hand. In this disguise, he walked up and down the trenches without suspicion, playing all the while upon his instrument as a Harper. By little and little he advanced near to the walls of the city, and, making himself known to the sentinels, was in the night drawn up by a rope.

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 æra, and more indubitable authority; for later History affords 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.

8

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 camp; and, though he could not but be known to be a Saxon by his dialect, the character he had assumed procured him a hospitable reception. He was admitted to entertain the king at table, and staid 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 (0). 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

1 See Rapin's Hist. [by Tindal, fol. 1732, vol. i. p. 36.] who places the incident here related under the year 495.

2 By Bale and Spelman. See note (M).

3 Ibid.

4 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 northern name Olaff, or Olave, Lat. Olaus. In the Old Romance of "HornChilde," the name of the king his father is Allof, which is evidently Ollaf, with the vowels only transposed.

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 he had lands assigned him for his maintenance (Q).

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,1 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 minstreltalents, 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, 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

1 Rollo was invested in his new duchy of Normandy A.D. 912. William invaded England A.D. 1066.

2 Vid. "Hist. des Troubadours," 3 tom. passim; & vid. "Fableaux ou Contes du XII. & du XIII. Siècle, traduits, &c. avec des Notes historiques & critiques, &c. par M. Le Grand." Paris, 1781, 5 tom. 12mo.

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 (s 2). 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 shown 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 trival 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 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.1 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.

1 See Note (B) and (A A).

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 K. 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 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, K. 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.1 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 rewards; 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 the 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).

The distinguished service which Richard received from one of his own Minstrels, in rescuing him from his cruel and tedious captivity, is a remarkable fact, which ought to be recorded for the honour of Poets and their art. This fact I shall relate in the following words of an ancient writer : 2

"The Englishmen were more then a whole yeare without hearing any

1 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. Litéraire 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.

2 Mons. Favine's Theatre of Honour and Knighthood, translated from the French. Lond. fol. 1623, tom. ii. p. 49. An elegant relation of the same event (from the French of Presid. Fauchet's Recueil, &c.) may be seen in "Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, by Anna Williams," Lond. 1766, 4to. p. 46. It will excite the reader's admiration to be informed, that most of the pieces of that collection were composed under the disadvantage of a total deprivation of sight.