“I cannot parfitly my paternoster, as the priest it singeth,
But I can ryme of Roben Hode, of Randolf erl of Chester,
But of our Lord and our Lady I learn nothing at all;
I am occupied every day, holy daye and other, with idle tales at the ale.”
The degradation in the meaning of the names once given to minstrels of various classes tells its own sad tale. The ryband has lent his name to ribaldry; the scurra to whatever is scurrilous; the gestour, who sang the gestes of heroes, became the jester, the mere buffoon; the joculator degenerated into a joker; and the jongleur into a juggler.
A few men of taste and of reverence for the past stood up for the old heroic ballads, which, indeed, contained the history of the past, mixed with much mythical matter. So the great Charles, says his scribe, Eginhard, “commanded that the barbarous and most ancient song in which the acts and wars of the old kings were sung should be written down and committed to memory.” And our own Alfred, says Asser, “did not fail to recite himself and urge on others, the recitation by heart of the Saxon songs.” But the English ballad found no favour with the Norman conquerors, who readily received the Provençal troubadour. The old heroic ballad lingered on, and was killed, not so much by the ridicule of Chaucer as by the impatience of the English character, which will not endure the long-drawn tale, and asks in preference what is pithy and pointed.
Of song and ballad there were many kinds, characterised rather by the instrument to which it was sung, than by the nature of the song itself; or perhaps we may say most justly that certain topics and certain kinds of composition suited certain instruments, and were, therefore, accommodated to them.
In the “Romans de Brut” we have a list of some of these:
“Molt ot a la cort jugleors,
Chanteors, estrumanteors;