he entertained Athelstan and his lords with his singing and his music, and was at
length dismissed with an honourable reward, though his songs must have discovered
him to have been a Dane (O). Athelstan was saved from the consequences of this
stratagem by a soldier, who had observed Aulaff bury the money which had been
given him, either from some scruple of honour, or motive of superstition. This
occasioned a discovery.
Now if the Saxons had not been accustomed to have minstrels of their own,
Alfred's assuming so new and unusual a character would have excited suspicions
among the Danes. On the other hand, if it had not been customary with the Saxons to
show favour and respect to the Danish Scalds, Aulaff would not have ventured
himself among them, especially on the eve of a battle (P). From the uniform
procedure, then, of both these kings we may fairly conclude that the same mode of
entertainment prevailed among both people, and that the Minstrel was a privileged
character with each.
But, if these facts had never existed, it can be proved from undoubted records,
that the Minstrel was a regular and stated officer in the court of our Anglo-Saxon
kings; for in Domesday-book,Joculator Regis, the King's Minstrel is expressly
mentioned in Gloucestershire; in which county it should seem that he had lands
assigned him for his maintenance (Q).
III. We have now brought the inquiry down to the Norman Conquest; and as the
Normans had been a late colony from Norway and Denmark, where the Scalds had
arrived to the highest pitch of credit before Rollo's expedition into France, we cannot
doubt but this adventurer, like the other northern princes, had many of these men in
his train who settled with him in his new duchy of Normandy, and left behind them
successors in their art: so that, when his descendant, William the Bastard, invaded this
kingdom in the following century,[16] that mode of entertainment could not but be
still familiar with the Normans. And that this is not mere conjecture will appear from
a remarkable fact, which shows that the arts of Poetry and Song were still as reputable
among the Normans in France as they had been among their ancestors in the north;
and that the profession of Minstrel, like that of Scald, was still aspired to by the most
gallant soldiers. In William's army was a valiant warrior, named Taillefer, who was
distinguished no less for the minstrel arts (R) than for his courage and intrepidity.
This man asked leave of his commander to begin the onset, and obtained it. He
accordingly advanced before the army, and with a loud voice animated his
countrymen with songs in praise of Charlemagne and Roland, and other heroes of
France; then rushing among the thickest of the English, and valiantly fighting, lost his
life.
Indeed, the Normans were so early distinguished for their minstrel-talents, that
an eminent French writer (S) makes no scruple to refer to them the origin of all
modern poetry, and shows that they were celebrated for their songs near a century
before the Troubadours of Provence, who are supposed to have led the way to the
poets of Italy, France, and Spain.[17]
We see, then, that the Norman Conquest was rather likely to favour the
establishment of the minstrel profession in this kingdom, than to suppress it: and
although the favour of the Norman conquerors would be probably confined to such of
their own countrymen as excelled in the minstrel arts; and in the first ages after the
Conquest no other songs would be listened to by the great nobility, but such as were
composed in their own Norman-French; yet as the great mass of the original