Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/207

 and Sentiments. 187 cathedral, fome of the feries of angels which till the fpandrels of its The Angelic Choh. arcades, and which have given to it the name of the angel choir, are playing inflruments, fuch as the trumpet, double pipe, pipe and tabret, dul- cimer, viol and harp, as if to reprefent the heavenly choir attuning their praifes in harmony with the human choir below: — "therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name." We will introduce here another drawing of an angelic minftrel (No. 129), playing a llialm, from the Royal MS. 14 E. iii. ; others occur at folio i of the fame MS. It has been fuggefted that the band of village muficians with flute, violin, clarionet, and baff-viol, whom moll of us have feen occupying the tinging-gallery of fome country church, are probably not inaccurate reprefenta- tives of the band of minftrels who occupied the rood-lofts in mediaeval times. In this period of the middle ages, indeed, mufic feems to have had a great charm for all clafTes of fociety, and each clafs appears in turn in the minftrel character in the illuminations of the manufcripts. Even the Ihepherds, throughout the middle ages, feem to have been mulical, like the fwains of Theocritus or No. 129 Virgil J for we conftantly find them reprefented playing ''y'"i'- upon inftrumentsj and in confirmation we give a couple of goatherds (No. Ar, Angel the SJialm.