amusement and pleasure when sung to the harp,
lost its point and spirit when read in retirement from the printed page.
Their composition would not bear criticism. Besides, the market had
become overstocked with these musical wares; as the religious houses had
with homilies and saintly legends. The consideration bestowed on the
early minstrels "enticed into their ranks idle vagabonds," according to
the act of Edward I, who went about the country under color of
minstrelsy; men who cared more about the supper than the song; who for
base lucre divorced the arts of writing and reciting and stole other
men's thunder. Their social degeneracy may be traced in the dictionary.
The chanter of the "gests" of kings, _gesta ducum regumque_,
dwindled into a gesticulator, a jester: the honored jogelar of Provence,
into a mountebank; the jockie, a doggrel ballad-monger.

Beggars they are by one consent,
And rogues by act of Parliament.

What a fall was there from their former high estate and reverence. The
earliest minstrels of the Norman courts, doubtless, came from France,
where their rank was almost regal.

Froissart, describing a Christmas festival given by Comte de Foix in the
fourteenth century, says:

"There were many Mynstrels as well of hys own as of strangers, and
eache of them dyd their devoyres in their facalties. The same day
the Earl of Foix gave to Hauralds and Minstrelles the sum of 500
franks, and gave to the Duke of Tonrayns Mynstreles gouns of cloth
of gold furred with ermyne valued at 200 franks."

The courts of kings swarmed with these merry singers in the Dark Ages,
and such sums were expended upon them, that they often drained the royal
treasuries. In William's army there was a brave warrior named Taillefer,
who was as renowned for minstrelsy as for arms. Like Tyrtaeus and Alemon,
in Sparta, he inspired his comrades with courage by his martial strains,
and actually led the van in the fight against the English, chanting the
praises of Charlemagne, and Roland. Richard Coeur de Lion was a
distinguished patron of minstrels as well as "the mirror of chivalry."
He was sought out in his prison in Austria by a faithful harper who made
himself known by singing a French song under the window of the castle in
which the king was confined. Blondel was the harper's name. The French
song translated reads thus:

"Your beauty, lady fair,
None views without delight;
But still so cold an air