Molt poissiez oir chançons,
Rotruanges et noviaz sons
Vieleures, lais, et notes,
Lais de vieles, lais de rotes,
Lais de harpe et de fretiax.”
Here we have the juggler, the chanter, and the strummer. What the strumentum[34] was we do not exactly know, but it was clearly a stringed instrument that was twanged, and it has left its reminiscence in our language,—every child strums before it can play a piano. There exists an old table of civic laws for Marseilles of the date 1381, in which all playing of minstrel and jongleur,—in a word, all strumming was disallowed in the streets without a license.
To return to the passage quoted from the “Romans de Brut,” we have among the chançons, those on the rote, and those on the vielle, those on the harp and those on the fret, (i.e. flute).[35] The rote was a pierced board, over which strings were drawn, and it could be played with both hands, one above, the other below, through the hole. The vielle was a hurdy-gurdy.
A healthier taste existed in Scotland than in England, and the old heroic ballads were never completely killed out there. In England they had been expelled the court, and banished from the hall long before they disappeared from the alehouse and the cottage. The milk-maids sang them; the nurses sang them; the shepherds sang them; but not the cultured ladies and gentlemen of the Elizabethan period. The musicians of that period set their faces against ballad airs, and introduced the motette and madrigal, in which elaborate part-singing taxed the skill of the performers. But the common people loved the simple melodious ballads. Miles Coverdale, in his “Address unto the Christian Reader,” in 1538, which he prefixed to his “Goastly Psalms,” laments it. “Wolde God that our mynstrels had none other thynge to play upon, neither our carters and pluomen other thynge to whistle upon, save psalmes, hymns, and such godly songes. And if women at the rockes (distaff), and spinnynge at the wheles, had none other songes to pass their tyme withal than such as Moses’ sister ... songe before them, they should be better occupied than with, Hey nonny nonny,—Hey trolly lolly, and such like fantasies.”