[1094] i.e. handkerchief. So in Shakspear's Othello, passim.
[1095] Perhaps, points.
[1096] The key, or screw, with which he tuned his harp.
[1097] The reader will remember that this was not a real minstrel, but only one personating that character; his ornaments therefore were only such as outwardly represented those of a real minstrel.
[1098] As the house of Northumberland had anciently three minstrels attending on them in their castles in Yorkshire, so they still retain three in their service in Northumberland, who wear the badge of the family (a silver crescent on the right arm), and are thus distributed; viz. one for the barony of Prudhoe, and two for the barony of Rothbury. These attend the court leets and fairs held for the Lord, and pay their annual suit and service at Alnwick castle; their instrument being the ancient Northumberland bagpipe (very different in form and execution from that of the Scots, being smaller; and blown, not with the breath, but with a small pair of bellows).
This, with many other venerable customs of the ancient Lord Percys, was revived by their illustrious representatives the late Duke and Dutchess of Northumberland.
[1099] Anno Dom. 1597. Vid. Pult. Stat. p. 1110, 39 Eliz.
[1100] See this vol. Song 6, v. 156, 180, &c.
[1101] Giraldus Cambrensis, writing in the reign of K. Henry II. mentions a very extraordinary habit or propensity, which then prevailed in the north of England, beyond the Humber, for "symphonious harmony," or singing "in two parts, the one murmuring in the base, and the other warbling in the acute or treble." (I use Dr. Burney's version, vol. ii. p. 108.) This he describes as practised by their very children from the cradle; and he derives it from the Danes (so Daci signifies in our old writers) and Norwegians, who long over-ran and in effect new-peopled the northern parts of England, where alone this manner of singing prevailed. (Vide Cambriae Descriptio, cap. 13, and in Burney, ubi supra.) Giraldus is probably right as to the origin or derivation of this practise, for the Danish and Icelandic scalds had carried the arts of poetry and singing to great perfection at the time the Danish settlements were made in the north. And it will also help to account for the superior skill and fame of our northern minstrels and harpers afterwards: who had preserved and transmitted the arts of their scaldic ancestors. See Northern Antiquities, vol. i. c. 13, p. 386, and Five pieces of Runic poetry, 1763, 8vo. Compare the original passage in Giraldus, as given by Sir John Hawkins, i. 408, and by Dr. Burney, ii. 108, who are both at a loss to account for this peculiarity, and therefore doubt the fact. The credit of Giraldus, which hath been attacked by some partial and bigotted antiquaries, the reader will find defended in that learned and curious work, Antiquities of Ireland, by Edward Ledwich, LL.D. &c. Dublin, 1790, 4to. p. 207, & seqq.
[1102] This line being quoted from memory, and given as old Scottish poetry, would have been readily corrected by the copy published in Scottish Songs, 1794, 2 vols. 12mo. i. p. 267, thus (though apparently corrupted from the Scottish idiom):