Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/195

 and Sentiments. ^75 CHAPTER IX. THE MINSTREL. HIS POSITION UNDER THE ANGLO-SAXONS. THE NORMAN TROUVERE, MENESTREL, AND JOUGLEUR. THEIR CON- DITION. RUTEBEUF. DIFFERENT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS IN USE AMONG THE MINSTRELS. THE BEVERLEY MINSTRELS. THE minftrel aAed fo very prominent a part in the houfehold and domeftic arrangements during the middle ages, that a vokime on the hiftory of domellic manners would be incomplete without fome more detailed account of his profeliion than the llight and occafional notices given in the preceding pages. Our information relating to the Anglo-Saxon minftrel is very im- perfe6t. He had two names — -fcop, which meant literally a "maker," and belonged probably to the primitive bard or poet ; and gUg-mari, or gleo- man, the modern gleeman, which fignifies literally a man who furnillied joy or pleafure, and appears to have had a more comprehenfive appli- cation, which included all profeflional performers for other people's amufement. In Beowulf (1. i8o), the " fong of the bard" {fang f copes) is accompanied by the found of the harp {hearpan fweg) ; and it is probable that the harp was the fpecial inftrument of the old Saxon bard, who chanted the mythic and heroic poems of the race. The gleemen played on a variety of inftruments, and they alfo exhibited a variety of other performances for the amufement of the hearers or fpeftators. In our engraving from an Anglo-Saxon illumination (p. 37), one of the gleemen is tofling knives and balls, which feems to have been confidered a favourite exhibition of Ikill down to a much later period. The early Englifh Rule of Nuns (printed by the Camden Society) fays of the wrathful man, that " he Ikirmiflies before the devil with knives, and he is his knife-toffer, and plays with fwords, and balances them upon his tongue