In this sense it is used in an ordinance in the times of Cromwell (1656), wherein it is enacted that if any of the "persons commonly called fidlers or minstrels shall at any time be taken playing, fidling, and making music in any inn, ale-house, or tavern, or shall be taken proffering themselves, or desiring, or intreating any ... to hear them play or make music in any of the places aforesaid" they are to be "adjudged and declared to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars."
This will also account why John of Gaunt's king of the minstrels at length came to be called, like le roy des violons in France (v. note [Bb2]), king of the fidlers. See the common ballad intitled The Pedigree, Education, and Marriage of Robin-hood with Clorinda, queen of Tutbury Feast: which, though prefixed to the modern collection on that subject,[1132] seems of much later date than most of the others; for the writer appears to be totally ignorant of all the old traditions concerning this celebrated outlaw, and has given him a very elegant bride instead of his old noted Lemman, "Maid Marian:" who together with his chaplain "Frier Tuck," were his favourite companions, and probably on that account figured in the old morice dance, as may be seen by the engraving in Mr Steevens's and Mr. Malone's edition of Shakespeare: by whom she is mentioned, 1 Hen. IV. act iii. sc. 3. (See also Warton, i. 245, ii. 237.) Whereas from this ballad's concluding with an exhortation to "pray for the king," and "that he may get children," &c. it is evidently posterior to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and can scarce be older than the reign of K. Charles I. for K. James I. had no issue after his accession to the throne of England. It may even have been written since the Restoration, and only express the wishes of the nation for issue on the marriage of their favourite K. Charles II., on his marriage with the Infanta of Portugal. I think it is not found in the Pepys collection.
[Ff] [Historical song or ballad.] The English word ballad is evidently from the French balade, as the latter is from the Italian ballata; which the Crusca Dictionary defines, canzone che si canta ballando: "a song which is sung during a dance." So Dr. Burney (ii. 342,) who refers to a collection of ballette, published by Gastaldi, and printed at Antwerp in 1596 (iii. 226.)
But the word appears to have had an earlier origin: for in the decline of the Roman empire, these trivial songs were called ballistea and saltatiunculæ. Ballisteum, Salmasius says, is properly ballistium, Gr. Βαλλιστεῖον. "ἀπὸ τοῦ Βαλλίζω ... Βαλλιστία saltatio ... Ballistium igitur est quod vulgo vocamus ballet; nam inde deducta vox nostra." Salmas. Not. in Hist. Ang. Scriptores, iv. p. 349.
In the life of the Emperor Aurelian by Fl. Vopiscus may be seen two of these ballistea, as sung by the boys skipping and dancing, on account of a great slaughter made by the emperor with his own hand in the Sarmatic war. The first is:
"Mille, mille, mille decollavimus,
Unus homo mille decollavimus,
Mille vivat, qui mille occidit.
Tantum vini habet nemo
Quantum fudit sanguinis."
The other was:
"Mille Sarmatas, mille Francos
Semel & semel occidimus.
Mille Persas quærimus."
Salmasius (in loc.) shows that the trivial poets of that time were wont to form their metre of trochaic tetrametre catalectics, divided into distichs. (Ibid. p. [350].) This becoming the metre of the hymns in the church service, to which the monks at length superadded rhyming terminations, was the origin of the common trochaic metre in the modern languages. This observation I owe to the learned author of Irish Antiquities, 4to.
[Ff2] [Little Miscellanies named Garlands, &c.] In the Pepysian and other libraries are preserved a great number of these in black letter, 12mo. under the following quaint and affected titles, viz.: