fife for the taborer's music.

In the middle ages the tabor and pipe were a good deal associated with
the performances of strollers and mountebanks. On the other hand, they
did not always take this role. There is a beautiful carved figure
playing the pipe and tabor in the Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral,
dating from 1270. In Strutt's _Sports and Pastimes_ (Ed. 2, Plate XXIV),
a horse is shown, dancing to a tabor and pipe, from a MS. of about 1300;
on Plate XXIII is a drawing of a taboring hare (without a pipe) of about
the end of the 13th century. I am not aware that these instruments are
known to have existed in England earlier than the 13th century.

Fra Angelico puts these instruments into the hands of an angelic lady.
Her tabor is beautifully given, the pipe is but slightly indicated. In
Florence, among the singing boys of Luca della Robbia (reproduced in fig.
5), is to be found the best representation of a pipe player that I have
seen. There is a comparatively modern picture of Will Kemp, {102a} the
Shakespearian actor, performing his dance to Norwich. He started,
apparently in 1599, on the "first Monday in cleane Lent," and succeeded
in his object, though not without difficulty. His attendants' names are
pleasant: Taborer, Tom Slye, Servant, Wm. Bee, Overseer, Geo. Sprat.

I am glad to say that a tabor and pipe appear in one very honourable
secular affair, {102b} namely, a tournament, more correctly a joust or
single combat. One of the combatants is supported by a bagpipe, the
other by a tabor and pipe. It must be confessed, however, that the
taborer was not well treated in mediaeval times, badly paid, and not
received with the honour given to minstrels.

[Picture: Fig. 5.--Pipe and Tabor]

I like the rustic character of the pipe, and its association with
cheerful mediaeval vagabonds, and, still more, its memories of centuries
of village dances. I wish it had found a place in that "dancing in the
chequered shade," in which Milton has immortalised the jocund rebecks.
But Milton was a player of the bass viol, and does not show any especial
feeling for wind instruments, so at least I gather from Welch's
interesting book. {103a}

The taborer's pipe is a whistle; it happens to be made of wood, but its
musical structure is precisely that of the penny whistle, except in one
important particular, that it has but three holes in place of six. The
pipe is therefore a poor relation of th