No. 134. Blowing the Trumpet and Playing on the Cymbals.
In the mediæval vocabularies we find several lists of musical instruments then best known. Thus John de Garlande, in the middle of the thirteenth century, enumerates, as the minstrels who were to be seen in the houses of the wealthy, individuals who performed on the instruments which he terms in Latin, lyra (meaning the harp), tibia (the flute), cornu (the horn), vidula (the fiddle), sistrum (the drum), giga (the gittern), symphonia (a symphony), psalterium (the psaltery), chorus, citola (the cittern), tympanum (the tabor), and cymbala (cymbals). The English glossaries of the fifteenth century add to these the trumpet, the ribibe (a sort of fiddle), organs, and the crowd. The forms of these instruments of various periods will be found in the illustrations which have been given in the course of the present chapter. It will be well perhaps to enumerate again the most common; they are the harp, fiddle, cittern or lute, hand-organ or dulcimer, the shalm or psaltery, the pipe and tabor, pipes of various sizes played like clarionets, but called flutes, the double pipe, hand-bells, trumpets and horns, bagpipes, tambourine, tabret, drum, and cymbals. We give two further groups of figures in illustration of these instruments, both taken from the Royal MS. so often quoted, 2 B. vii. In the first ([No. 134]) we have a boy (apparently) playing the cymbals; and in the second (No. 135) an example of the double flute, which we have already seen in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts (see before, pp. 35 and 65), and which appears to have been one of the musical instruments borrowed immediately from the Romans. In conclusion of this subject we give a group of musical instruments ([No. 136]) from one of the illustrations of the celebrated book entitled “Der Weise König,” a work of the close of the fifteenth century.
No. 135. The Dulcimer and Double Flute.
No. 136. Musical Instruments.
The early commentator on the Dictionarius, or Vocabulary, of John de Garlande, calls the musical instruments instrumenta leccatorum, (instruments of the letchers or ribalds), and I have already stated that the minstrels, or jougleurs, were considered as belonging generally to that degraded class of society. In the vocabularies of the fifteenth century, they are generally classed under the head of reprehensible or disgraceful professions, along with ribalds, heretics, harlots, and so forth. It was the same character which led them, a little later, to be proscribed in acts of parliament, under the titles of rogues and vagabonds. In the older poetry, too, they are often joined with disgraceful epithets. There is a curious early metrical story, or fabliau, which was made, no doubt, to be recited by the minstrels themselves, although it throws ridicule on their profession; it is entitled Les deux Troveors ribauz, “the two ribald trouvères,” and consists in a ludicrous dispute between them on their qualifications as minstrels. My readers must not suppose that at this time the reciters of poetry were a different or better class than those who performed jugglery and low buffoonery—for, in this poem, either of the two claimants to superiority boasts of his skill equally in possessing in his memory completely, and being able to recite well, the early Chansons de Geste, or Carlovingian romances, the later romances of chivalry, and the fabliaux or metrical stories; in playing upon the most fashionable musical instruments, such as the citole, the fiddle, and the gigue (gittern); in performing extraordinary feats and in sleight of hand; and even in making chaplets of flowers, and in acting as a spy or as a go-between in love intrigues. No doubt there were minstrels who kept themselves more respectable, but they were exceptions to the general character of the class, and were chiefly men in the service of the king or of the great barons. There appears also to have been, for a long time, a continued attempt to raise minstrelsy to a respectable position, and out of this attempt arose, in different places, companies and guilds. Of these, the most remarkable of which we have any knowledge in this country, was the ancient fraternity of minstrels of Beverley, in Yorkshire. When this company originated is not known; but it was of some consideration and wealth in the reign of Henry VI., when the church of St. Mary’s, in that town, was built; for the minstrels gave a pillar to it, on the capital of which a band of minstrels were sculptured. The cut below ([No. 137]) is copied from the engraving of this group, given in Carter’s “Ancient Painting and Sculpture.” The oldest existing document of the fraternity is a copy of laws of the time of Philip and Mary, similar to those by which all trade guilds were governed: their officers were an alderman and two stewards or seers (i. e. searchers); and the only items in their laws which throw any light upon the history or condition of the minstrels are—one which requires that they should not take “any new brother except he be mynstrell to some man of honour or worship, or waite of some towne corporate or other ancient town, or else of such honestye and conyng (knowledge) as shall be thought laudable and pleasant to the hearers there;” and another, to the effect that “no mylner, shepherd, or of other occupation, or husbandman, or husbandman servant, playing upon pype or other instrument, shall sue (follow) any wedding, or other thing that pertaineth to the said science, except in his own parish.” Institutions like these, however, had little effect in counteracting the natural decline of minstrelsy, for the state of society in which it existed was passing away. It would be curious to trace the changes in its history by the instruments which became especially characteristic of the popular jougleur. The harp had given way to the fiddle, and already, towards the end of the thirteenth century, the fiddle was yielding its place to the tabor. In the Anglo-Norman romance of Horn, of the thirteenth century, we are told of a ribald “who goes to marriages to play on the tabor”— A li piert qu’il est las un lechur
Ki à ces nocces vient pur juer od tabur;
and the curious fabliau of the king of England and the jougleur of Ely describes the latter as carrying his tabor swung to his neck—
Entour son col porta soun tabour.
