No. 127. Musicians of the Cloister.
No. 128. The Angelic Choir.
No. 129. An Angel Playing on the Shalm.
In other manuscripts we find the ordinary musical instruments placed in the hands of the angels; as in the early fourteenth century MS. Reg. 2 B. vii., in a representation (copied in our cut [No. 128]) of the creation with the morning stars singing together, and all the sons of God shouting for joy, an angelic choir are making melody on the trumpet, fiddle, cittern, shalm, and harp. There is another choir of angels at p. 168 of the same MS., with two citterns and two shalms, a fiddle and a trumpet. Similar representations occur in the choirs of churches. In the bosses of the ceiling of Tewkesbury abbey church we see angels playing the cittern (with a plectrum), the harp (with its cover seen enveloping the lower half of the instrument), and the cymbals. In the choir of Lincoln cathedral, some of the series of angels which fill the spandrels of its arcades, and which have given to it the name of the angel choir, are playing instruments, such as the trumpet, double pipe, pipe and tabret, dulcimer, viol and harp, as if to represent the heavenly choir attuning their praises in harmony with the human choir below:—“therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name.” We will introduce here another drawing of an angelic minstrel ([No. 129]), playing a shalm, from the Royal MS. 14 E. iii.; others occur at folio 1 of the same MS. It has been suggested that the band of village musicians with flute, violin, clarionet, and bass-viol, whom most of us have seen occupying the singing-gallery of some country church, are probably not inaccurate representatives of the band of minstrels who occupied the rood-lofts in mediæval times. In this period of the middle ages, indeed, music seems to have had a great charm for all classes of society, and each class appears in turn in the minstrel character in the illuminations of the manuscripts. Even the shepherds, throughout the middle ages, seem to have been musical, like the swains of Theocritus or Virgil; for we constantly find them represented playing upon instruments; and in confirmation we give a couple of goatherds ([No. 130]), from MS. Reg. 2 B. vii. fol. 83, of early fourteenth century date: they are playing on the pipe and horn. But, besides these instruments, the bagpipe was also a rustic instrument: there is a shepherd playing upon one on folio 112 of the same MS. (given in our cut [No. 131]): and again, in the early fourteenth century MS. Reg. 2 B. vi., on the reverse of folio 8, is a group of shepherds, one of whom plays a small pipe, and another the bagpipes. Chaucer (in the “House of Fame”) mentions— Pipes made of grene corne,
As han thise lytel herde gromes,
That kepen bestis in the bromes.
It is curious to find that even at so late a period as the reign of queen Mary, they still officiated at weddings and other merrymakings in their villages, and even sometimes excited the jealousy of the professors of the joyous science, as we have seen in the early French poem against the taborers.
| No. 130. A Group of Shepherds. | No. 131. A Bagpiper. |
| No. 132. The Lady and Tambourine. | No. 133. A Drummer. |
I give next (cut [No. 132]) a representation of a female minstrel playing the tambourine; it is also taken from a MS. of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 2 B. vii. fol. 182).
The earliest instance yet met with of the modern-shaped drum is contained in the Coronation Book of Richard II., preserved in the Chapter-house. Westminster, and is represented in the annexed cut ([No. 133]). This mediæval drummer is clearly intended to be playing on two drums at once; and, in considering their forms and position, we must make some allowance for the mediæval neglect of perspective.