minstrel

   Minstrels were originally traveling professional entertainers of late medieval Europe in the tradition of the earlier SCOP or JONGLEUR.While some minstrels were clearly attached at least semipermanently to noble houses, most typically they were itinerant musicians, singers, storytellers, magicians, or jugglers who wandered from court to court and from town to town, performing wherever they were likely to find patronage. They do seem to have performed for all classes of society, from kings and nobles to priests, burgers, and laborers. As singers and storytellers, minstrels were likely to circulate love lyrics, folk BALLADS, old legends like the CHANSONS DE GESTE, and newer tales in the form of ROMANCES. Some of the popular MIDDLE ENGLISH romances, such as HAVELOK THE DANE, seem to have been the kind of tales popularized by minstrels. Rather than writing their songs or tales down, however, most minstrels seem to have relied on memory and improvisation as central to their art.

   Minstrels flourished from the later 13th century through the early 15th.As time went on, more and more minstrels became associated with music rather than poetry and more often were attached permanently to noble houses or settled in towns, and during the 14th and 15th centuries, minstrel guilds began to develop throughout Europe. These guilds required that minstrels be trained by other members of the guild, ensured that there was work in the town for guild members, and protected guild members from competition by wandering musicians—the group from whom minstrels sprang to begin with. With the development of printing in the late 15th century, the art of minstrelsy, particularly as the wandering storyteller, declined significantly throughout Europe.

   Bibliography

   ■ Southworth, John. The English Medieval Minstrel. Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.: Boydell, 1989.