Dauphine.—I would it would call the trumpeters hither!
Clerimont.—Faith, there is hope: they have intelligence of all feasts. There’s a good correspondence betwixt them and the London cooks: ’tis twenty to one but we have them.
And Dryden, so late as the time of William III., speaks of them—
“These fellows
Were once the minstrels of a country show,
Followed the prizes through each paltry town,
By trumpet cheeks and bloated faces known.”
There were also female minstrels throughout the Middle Ages; but, as might be anticipated from their irregular wandering life, they bore an indifferent reputation. The romance of “Richard Cœur de Lion” says that it was a female minstrel, and, still worse, an Englishwoman, who recognised and betrayed the knight-errant king and his companions, on their return from the Holy Land, to his enemy, the “King of Almain.” The passage is worth quoting, as it illustrates several of the traits of minstrel habits which we have already recorded. After Richard and his companions had dined on a goose, which they cooked for themselves at a tavern—
“When they had drunken well afin,
A minstralle com therin,
And said ‘Gentlemen, wittily,
Will ye have any minstrelsey?’
Richard bade that she should go.
That turned him to mickle woe!
The minstralle took in mind,[358]
And saith, ‘Ye are men unkind;
And if I may, ye shall for-think[359]
Ye gave neither meat nor drink.
For gentlemen should bede[360]
To minstrels that abouten yede[361]
Of their meat, wine, and ale;
For los[362] rises of minstrale.’
She was English, and well true
By speech, and sight, and hide, and hue.”
Stow tells that in 1316, while Edward II. was solemnizing his Feast of Pentecost in his hall at Westminster, sitting royally at table, with his peers about him, there entered a woman adorned like a minstrel, sitting on a great horse, trapped as minstrels then used, who rode round about the tables showing her pastime. The reader will remember the use which Sir E. B. Lytton has made of a troop of tymbesteres in “The Last of the Barons,” bringing them in at the epochs of his tale with all the dramatic effect of the Greek chorus: the description which he gives of their habits is too sadly truthful. The daughter of Herodias dancing before Herod is scornfully represented by the mediæval artists as a female minstrel performing the tumbling tricks which were part of their craft. We give a representation of a female minstrel playing the tambourine from the MS. Royal, 2 B vii. folio 182.
Female Minstrel.
A question of considerable interest to artists, no less than to antiquaries, is whether the minstrels were or not distinguished by any peculiar costume or habit. Bishop Percy[363] and his followers say that they were, and the assertion is grounded on the following evidences: Baldulph, the Saxon, in the anecdote already related, when assuming the disguise of a minstrel, is described as shaving his head and beard, and dressing himself in the habit of that profession. Alfred and Aulaff were known at once to be minstrels. The two poor priests who were turned out of the monastery by the dissolute monks were at first mistaken for minstrels. The woman who entered Westminster Hall at King Edward the Second’s Pentecost feast was adorned like a minstrel, sitting on a great horse, trapped as minstrels then used.