Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/204

 i84 Hijlory of Domejiic Manners who firft made a tabor, for it is an inftrument which ought to pleafe nobody. No rich man ought to love the found of a tabor, which is bad for people's heads ; for, if rtretched tight, and ftruck hard, it may be heard at half a league's diftance :" — Qjui primes fifl tabor ^ Diex U ernjoit contraire ! i^ie c-Jtriiment i eft qu a nului ne doit plalre. Kiis riches horn ne dolt fon de tabour amer. S^ant il eft bien tendu et on le vent hurter, De dem'ie grant lieue le puet-on efcouter ; Ci a trap mawues jon por Jon chief conforter . The mufical inftruments ufed by the mcdianal gleemen and min- ftrels form in themfelves a not uninterelVmg fubjecrt. Thofe enumerated in the Anglo-Saxon vocabularies are the harp {hearpe, cithara), the I-yme, or trumpet, the pipe, "or whilHe," the fitJit'Ic, viol, or fiddle, the horn, and the trumpet, the latter of which was called in Anglo-Saxon trutli and fcvrga. To thefe we mull: certainly add a few others, for the drum or tabor feems to have been in ufe among them under fome form, as well as the cymbal, hand-bells, lyre ftruck by a pleftrum, and the organ, which latter was already the favourite church inftrument. A portable organ was in ufe in the middle ages, of which vse give a figure (No. 124), from a manufcript in the BritiiTi Mufeum of the earlier part of the fourteenth cen- tury (MS. Reg. 14 E. iii.). This hand-organ was known alfo by the name of the dulcimer. It occurs again in the following group (No. 125), taken from a manufcript of the fourteenth century in the Britilh Mufeum (MS. Addit. No. 10,293), where the per- former on the dulcimer is accompanied by two other minftrels, one play- ing on the bagpipe, the other on the viol or fiddle. Each of the figures in this group is drelfed in a coftume fo dif- ferent from the others that one might almoft fuppofe them engaged in An Or.ra.