The Anglo-Saxon potations were accompanied with various kinds of amusements. One of these was telling stories, and recounting the exploits of themselves or of their friends. Another was singing their national poetry, to which the Saxons were much attached. In the less elevated class, where professed minstrels were not retained, each guest was minstrel in his turn. Cædmon, as his story is related by Bede, became a poet through the emulation thus excited. One of the ecclesiastical canons enacted under king Edgar enjoins “that no priest be a minstrel at the ale (ealu-scóp), nor in any wise act the gleeman (gliwige), with himself or with other men.” In the account of the murder of king Ethelbert in Herefordshire, by the treachery of Offa’s wicked queen (A.D. 792), we are told that the royal party, after dinner, “spent the whole day with music and dancing in great glee.” The cut, [No. 24] (taken from the Harl. MS., No. 603), is a perfect illustration of this incident of Saxon story. The cup-bearer is serving the guest with wine from a vessel which is evidently a Saxon imitation of the Roman amphora; it is perhaps the Anglo-Saxon sester or sæster; a word, no doubt, taken from the Latin sextarius, and carrying with it, in general, the notion of a certain measure. In Saxon translations from the Latin, amphora is often rendered by sester. We have here a choice party of minstrels and gleemen. Two are occupied with the harp, which appears, from a comparison of Beowulf with the later writers, to have been the national instrument. It is not clear from the picture whether the two men are playing both on the same harp, or whether one is merely holding the instrument for the other. Another is perhaps intended to represent the Anglo-Saxon fithelere, playing on the fithele (the modern English words fiddler and fiddle); but his instrument appears rather to be the cittern, which was played with the fingers, not with the bow. Another representation of this performer, from the same manuscript, is given in the cut [No. 25], where the instrument is better defined. The other two minstrels, in [No. 24], are playing on the horn, or on the Saxon pip, or pipe. The two dancers are evidently a man and a woman, and another lady to the extreme right seems preparing to join in the same exercise. We know little of the Anglo-Saxon mode of dancing, but to judge by the words used to express this amusement, hoppan (to hop), saltian and stellan (to leap), and tumbian (to tumble), it must have been accompanied with violent movements. Our cut [No. 26] (from the Cottonian MS., Cleopatra, C. viii. fol. 16, vo), represents another party of minstrels, one of whom, a female, is dancing, while the other two are playing on a kind of cithara and on the Roman double flute. The Anglo-Saxon names for the different kinds of musicians most frequently spoken of were hearpere, the harper; bymere, the trumpeter; pipere, the player on the pipe or flute; fithelere, the fiddler; and horn-blawere, the horn-blower. The gligman, or gleeman, was the same who, at a later period, was called, in Latin, joculator, and, in French, a jougleur; and another performer, called truth, is interpreted as a stage player, but was probably some performer akin to the gleeman. The harp seems to have stood in the highest rank, or, at least, in the highest popularity, of musical instruments; it was termed poetically the gleó-beam, or the glee-wood.
No. 26. Anglo-Saxon Minstrels.
Although it was considered a very fashionable accomplishment among the Anglo-Saxons to be a good singer of verses and a good player on the harp, yet the professed minstrel, who went about to every sort of joyous assemblage, from the festive hall to the village wake, was a person not esteemed respectable. He was beneath consideration in any other light than as affording amusement, and as such he was admitted everywhere, without examination. It was for this reason that Alfred, and subsequently Athelstan, found such easy access in this garb to the camps of their enemies; and it appears to have been a common disguise for such purposes. The group given in the last cut ([No. 26]) are intended to represent the persons characterised in the text (of Prudentius) by the Latin word ganeones (vagabonds, ribalds), which is there glossed by the Saxon term gleemen (ganeonum, gliwig-manna). Besides music and dancing, they seem to have performed a variety of tricks and jokes, to while away the tediousness of a Saxon afternoon, or excite the coarse mirth of the peasant. That such performers, resembling in many respects the Norman jougleur, were usually employed by Anglo-Saxons of wealth and rank, is evident from various allusions to them. Gaimar has preserved a curious Saxon story of the murder of king Edward by his stepmother (A.D. 978), in which the queen is represented as having in her service a dwarf minstrel, who is employed to draw the young king alone to her house. According to the Anglo-Norman relator of this story, the dwarf was skilled in various modes of dancing and tumbling, characterised by words of which we can hardly now point out the exact distinction, “and could play many other games.”
Wolstanet un naim aveit,
Ki baler e trescher saveit;
Si saveit sailler e tumber,
E altres gius plusurs juer.
In a Saxon manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Cotton. Tiberius, C. vi.), among the minstrels attendant on king David (represented in our cut, [No. 27]), we see a gleeman, who is throwing up and catching knives and balls, a common performance of the later Norman jougleurs, as well as of our modern mountebanks. Some of the tricks and gestures of these performers were of the coarsest description, such as could be only tolerated in a rude state of society. An example will be found in a story told by William of Malmesbury of wandering minstrels, whom he had seen performing at a festival at that monastery when he was a child, and which we can hardly venture to give even under the veil of the original Latin. A poem in the Exeter manuscript describes the wandering character of the Saxon minstrels. He tells us:—
swa scriþende Thus roving gesceapum hweorfað with their lays go gleo-men gumena the gleemen of men geond grunda fela, over many lands, þearfe secgað, state their wants, þonc-word sprecaþ, utter words of thank, simle suð oþþe norð always south or north, sumne gemetað they find one gydda gleawne, knowing in songs, geofum unhneawne. who is liberal of gifts. —Exeter Book, p. 326.
No. 27. Anglo-Saxon Minstrels and Gleeman.
We are not to suppose that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers remained at table, merely drinking and listening. On the contrary, the performance of the minstrels appears to have been only introduced at intervals, between which the guests talked, joked, propounded and answered riddles, boasted of their own exploits, disparaged those of others, and, as the liquor took effect, became noisy and quarrelsome. The moral poems often allude to the quarrels and slaughters in which feasts ended. One of these poems, enumerating the various endowments of men, says:— sum bið wrœd tæfle; one is expert at dice; sum bið gewittig one is witty æt win-þege, at wine-bibbing, beor-hyrde god. a good beer-drinker. —Exeter Book, p. 297. A “Monitory Poem,” in the same collection, thus describes the manners of the guests in hall:— þonne monige beoð but many are mæþel-hergendra, lovers of social converse, wlonce wig-smiþas, haughty warriors, win-burgum in, in pleasant cities, sittaþ æt symble they sit at the feast, soð-gied wrecað, tales recount, wordum wrixlað, in words converse, witan fundiað strive to know hwylc æsc-stede who the battle place, inne in ræcede within the house, mid werum wunige; will with men abide; þonne win hweteð then wine wets beornes breost-sefan, the man’s breast-passions, breahtme stigeð suddenly rises cirm on corþre, clamour in the company, cwide-scral letaþ an outcry they send forth missenlice. various. —Exeter Book, p. 314. In a poem on the various fortunes of men, and the different ways in which they come by death, we are told:— sumum meces ecg from one the sword’s edge on meodu-bence, on the mead-bench, yrrum ealo-wosan, angry with ale, ealdor oþþringeð, life shall expel, were win-sadum. a wine-sated man. —Exeter Book, p. 330. And in the metrical legend of St. Juliana, the evil one boasts:— sume ic larum geteah, some I by wiles have drawn, te geflite fremede, to strife prepared, þæt hy færinga that they suddenly eald-afþoncan old grudges edniwedan, have renewed, beore druncne; drunken with beer; ic him byrlade I to them poured wreht of wege, discord from the cup, þæt hi in win-sale so that they in the social hall þurh sweord-gripe through gripe of sword sawle forletan the soul let forth of flæsc-homan. from the body. —Exeter Book, p. 271.