Not only at these stated periods, but at all times, the minstrels were liable to be called upon to enliven the tedium of their lord or lady with music and song; the King of Hungary (in “The Squire of Low Degree”), trying to comfort his daughter for the loss of her lowly lover by the promise of all kinds of pleasures, says that in the morning—
“Ye shall have harpe, sautry, and songe,
And other myrthes you among.”
And again a little further on, after dinner—
“When you come home your menie amonge,
Ye shall have revell, daunces, and songe;
Lytle children, great and smale,
Shall syng as doth the nightingale.”
And yet again, when she is gone to bed—
“And yf ye no rest can take,
All night mynstrels for you shall wake.”
Doubtless many of the long winter evenings, when the whole household was assembled round the blazing wood fire in the middle of the hall, would be passed in listening to those interminable tales of chivalry which my lord’s chief harper would chant to his harp, while his fellows would play a symphony between the “fyttes.” Of other occasions on which the minstrels would have appropriate services to render, an entry in the Household Book of the Percy family in A.D. 1512 gives us an indication: There were three of them at their castle in the north, a tabret, a lute, and a rebec; and we find that they had a new-year’s gift, “xxs. for playing at my lordes chamber doure on new yeares day in the mornynge; and for playing at my lordes sone and heire’s chamber doure, the lord Percy, iis.; and for playing at the chamber dours of my lord’s yonger sonnes, my yonge masters, after viii. the piece for every of them.”
But besides the official minstrels of kings, nobles, and gentlemen, bishops, and abbots, and corporate towns, there were a great number of “minstrels unattached,” and of various grades of society, who roamed abroad singly or in company, from town to town, from court to camp, from castle to monastery, flocking in great numbers to tournaments and festivals and fairs, and welcomed everywhere.
The summer-time was especially the season for the wanderings of these children of song,[346] as it was of the knight-errant[347] and of the pilgrim[348] also. No wonder that the works of the minstrels abound as they do with charming outbursts of song on the return of the spring and summer, and the delights which they bring. All winter long the minstrel had lain in some town, chafing at its miry and unsavoury streets, and its churlish, money-getting citizens; or in some hospitable castle or manor-house, perhaps, listening to the wind roaring through the broad forests, and howling among the turrets overhead, until he pined for freedom and green fields; his host, perchance, grown tired of his ditties, and his only occupation to con new ones; this, from the “Percy Reliques,” sounds like a verse composed at such a time:—