Besides money and good meals, those musical wanderers often received a variety of gifts, such as cloaks, furred robes, and the like. Langland alludes more than once to these largesses, which proves that they were considerable, and he regrets that all this was not distributed to the poor who go, they too, from door to door, and are the minstrels of God: {207}

“Clerkus and knyghtes · welcometh kynges mynstrales,

And for love of here lordes · lithen hem at festes:

Much more, me thenketh · riche men auhte

Have beggers by-fore hem · whiche beth godes mynstrales.”[275]

38. PLAYING UPON THE VIELLE.

(From the MS. 10 E.IV; English; early Fourteenth Century.)

But his advice was not heeded, and long after his time the min­strels con­tinued to be ad­mit­ted to the castle halls. In erect­ing the hall the builder took into ac­count the prob­able visits of mu­si­cians, and often raised a gal­lery for them above the en­trance door, op­po­site to the dais, the place where the master’s table was set.[276] This cus­tom long survived the Mid­dle Ages. At Hat­field a min­strels’ gal­lery of the seven­teenth cen­tury adorns the hall of that beaut­i­ful place, and is still, on great oc­ca­sions, put to the use it was orig­i­nal­ly in­tended for.

The classic instrument of the minstrel was the vielle, a kind of violin or fiddle with a bow, something like ours, a drawing of which, as used in the thir­teenth cen­tury, is to be found in the album of Villard de Honne­court.[277] It was delicate to handle, and required much skill; in pro­por­tion there­fore as the pro­fes­sion lowered, the good per­former on the vielle became rarer; the common tam­bour­ine or tabor, which needed but little training, replaced the vielle, and true artists complained of the music and the taste of the {208} day. It was a tabor that the glee-man of Ely wore at his neck when he had his famous dialogue with the King of England, which proved so bewildering for the monarch: “He came thence to London; in a meadow he met the king and his suite; around his neck hung his tabor, painted with gold and rich azure.”[278]