And gestiours, that tellen tales,
Bothe of weping and of game.’
Cf. Sir Thopas, 134; and Gower, Confessio Amantis, vii. 2424:
‘And every menstral hadde pleid,
And every disour hadde seid.’
The evidence of Erasmus is late, of course, for the hey-day of minstrelsy, but in his time there were certainly English minstrels who merely recited, without musical accompaniment; cf. Ecclesiastes (Opera, v. col. 958) ‘Apud Anglos est simile genus hominum, quales apud Italos sunt circulatores, de quibus modo dictum est; qui irrumpunt in convivia magnatum, aut in cauponas vinarias; et argumentum aliquod, quod edidicerunt, recitant; puta mortem omnibus dominari, aut laudem matrimonii. Sed quoniam ea lingua monosyllabis fere constat, quemadmodum Germanica; atque illi studio vitant cantum, nobis latrare videntur verius quam loqui.’
[295] Ten Brink, i. 193, 225, 235, old gleeman tradition was probably less interfered with in the lowlands of Scotland than in England proper; cf. Henderson, Scottish Vernacular Literature, 16.
[296] Ten Brink, i. 322; Jusserand, i. 360; Courthope, i. 197. Minot’s poems have been edited by J. Hall (Oxford, 1887). See also Wright, Political Songs (C.S.) and Political Poems and Songs (R.S.). Many of these, however, are Latin.
[297] On Welsh bardism see H. d’Arbois de Jubainville, Intr. à l’Étude de la Litt. celtique, 63; Stephens, Literature of the Kymry, 84, 93, 97, 102; Ernest David, Études historiques sur la Poésie et la Musique dans la Cambrie, 13, 62-103, 147-64. In Wales, an isolated corner of Europe, little touched by Latin influences, the bards long retained the social and national position which it is probable they once had held in all the Aryan peoples. Their status is defined in the laws of Howel Dha (†920) and in those of Gruffyd ab Cynan (1100). The latter code distinguishes three orders of bards proper, the Pryddyd or Chair bards, the Teuluwr or Palace bards, and the Arwyddfardd or heralds, also called Storiawr, the cantores historici of Giraldus Cambrensis. The Pryddyd and Teuluwr differ precisely as poets and executants, trouvères and jougleurs. Below all these come the Clerwr, against whom official bardism from the sixth to the thirteenth century showed an inveterate animosity. These are an unattached wandering folk, players on flutes, tambourines, and other instruments meaner than the telyn or harp, and the crwth or viol which alone the bards proper deigned to use. Many of them had also picked up the mime-tricks of the foreigners. It was probably with these Clerwr that the English and French neighbours of the Kelts came mainly into contact. Padelford, 5, puts this contact as early as the Anglo-Saxon period.
[298] Giraldus Cambrensis, Descriptio Cambriae, i. 17 ‘famosus ille fabulator Bledhericus, qui tempora nostra paulo praevenit.’ Thomas, Tristan (†1170, ed. Michel, ii. 847):