Other enow and some I cannot name.
Songsters that merry sung,
Sound of glee over all rung;
Disours enow telled fables:
And some played with dice at tables.
But we are not without traces of the troubadour. The simple vocalist, a strolling professionalist, too, in many instances, remains hale and hearty in our ‘Glemans,’ ‘Gleemans,’ and ‘Glemmans,’ not to mention our ‘Sangsters.’ Amid such lulls as might intervene, we should hear them at the popular festivals bidding for favour with their old-fashioned stories of ‘hawk and hound,’ and ‘my ladyes bower,’ set, no doubt, to airs equally à la mode. A contemporary poet tells us their song
Hath been sung at festivals
On ember eves, and holy-ales.
The recitation of these stories seems to have been a peculiarly popular profession. Our ‘Rhymers’ oftentimes showed their skill in the art of rhythmical narration by weaving the exploits they described into extempore verse.[[313]] The ‘Juggler’ or ‘Joculator,’ originally a minstrel or ‘jester,’ something akin to the clown of later days, became by-and-by more celebrated for his skill in legerdemain than loquacity, and now little else is understood by the word. Almost every baron, and even the king himself, had his favourite jester; but it was an art put to the most corrupt purposes, and ‘Jagge the Jogelour’ is set in very low company by Piers Plowman. Certainly his jokes were of the lewdest description, even for the rough times in which he lived. His voice, too, was sufficiently elevated, if we may trust the account given in the ‘Romance of Alexander,’ for—
No scholde mon have herd the thondur,