Chapter IV · SURNAMES OF OCCUPATION (COUNTRY). (continued 2)

Singing he was, or floyting alle the day,

He was as freshe as is the month of May.

There is one name I must mention here, that of ‘Peter le Organer,’^[312] perhaps connected with ‘Orger’ of the same date. The owner of this more modern-looking term may either have been organist at some monastery or abbey-church, or he may have played upon the portable regal, in which latter case he too might possibly have been seen here. But ‘organ’ was a very general term. In the old psalters it seems to have been used for nearly every species of instrument. We should scarcely speak now of ‘hanging up our “organs” upon the willows,’ but so an old version of the Psalms has it. Did we not know they were a modern invention we might have been inclined to suspect ‘le Organer’ to have been but a strolling 313performer upon the ‘hurdy-gurdy.’ That, however, was an infliction mercifully spared to our forefathers. In concluding this brief survey of mediæval music, I cannot, I think, do better than quote, as I have done partially once before, Robert de Brunne’s account of the coronation of King Arthur, wherein we shall find many, if not most, of the professional characters I have been mentioning familiarly spoken of. He says—

Jogelours weren there enow

That their quaintise forthe drew:

Minstrels many with divers glew (glee)

Sounds of bemes (trumps) that men blew,

Harpes, pipes, and tabours,

Fithols (fiddles), citolles (cymbals), sautreours,

Belles, chimès and synfan

Other enow and some I cannot name.

Songsters that merry sung,

Sound of glee over all rung;

Disours enow telled fables:

And some played with dice at tables.

But we are not without traces of the troubadour. The simple vocalist, a strolling professionalist, too, in many instances, remains hale and hearty in our ‘Glemans,’ ‘Gleemans,’ and ‘Glemmans,’ not to mention our ‘Sangsters.’ Amid such lulls as might intervene, we should hear them at the popular festivals bidding for favour with their old-fashioned stories of ‘hawk and hound,’ and ‘my ladyes bower,’ set, no doubt, to airs equally à la mode. A contemporary poet tells us their song

Hath been sung at festivals

On ember eves, and holy-ales.

The recitation of these stories seems to have been a 314peculiarly popular profession. Our ‘Rhymers’ oftentimes showed their skill in the art of rhythmical narration by weaving the exploits they described into extempore verse.^[313] The ‘Juggler’ or ‘Joculator,’ originally a minstrel or ‘jester,’ something akin to the clown of later days, became by-and-by more celebrated for his skill in legerdemain than loquacity, and now little else is understood by the word. Almost every baron, and even the king himself, had his favourite jester; but it was an art put to the most corrupt purposes, and ‘Jagge the Jogelour’ is set in very low company by Piers Plowman. Certainly his jokes were of the lewdest description, even for the rough times in which he lived. His voice, too, was sufficiently elevated, if we may trust the account given in the ‘Romance of Alexander,’ for—

No scholde mon have herd the thondur,

For the noise of the taboures,

And the trumpours, and the jangelours.

The ‘Dissour,’ the old Norman ‘diseur,’ similar in character to the rhymer and the juggler, seems to have left no memorial, saving it be in our ‘Dissers;’^[314] 315neither can I trace ‘le Tregetour’ later than the fifteenth century. Every footprint of his professional existence, indeed, is now faded from our view. And yet there was the day when none could be more familiar than he. The Hundred Rolls record not merely ‘Symon le Tregetor,’ but ‘William le Tregetur’ also, while ‘Maister John Rykele’ is spoken of by Lydgate as ‘sometime Tregitour of noble Henrie, King of Engleland.’ Chaucer, too, mentions sciences

By which men maken divers apparences,

Such as these subtil tregetoures play.

For oft at feasts have I wel heard say

That tragetoures, within an halle large

Have made come in a water and a barge

And in the halle rowen up and down:

while in another place he speaks of seeing

Coll Tragetour

Upon a table of sicamour

Play an uncouth thing to tell;

I saw him carry a wind-mill

Under a walnut-shell;

with other equally marvellous feats. Thus we see that the art of legerdemain was not neglected at this time.

I doubt whether any relics we possess so completely convey to our minds the radical changes which have swept across the face of our English Commonwealth as do these lingering surnames. They remind us of the invention of printing, of the spread of literature, and of the slow decay thereby of the professions they represented. They tell us of a changed society, they tell us of a day of rougher cast and looser trammels; 316they tell us of a life around which the lapse of intervening years has thrown a halo of so quaint aspect that we all but long, in our more sentimental moods, to be thrown back upon it again. Placing these tell-tale names by the life of the present, we see what a change has passed over all. Let us hope this change denotes progress. In some respects it assuredly does: progress in the settlement of our common rights and duties, progress in civilization and order, progress in mental culture, progress in decorum. Still we may yet ask, with all this has there been any true progress? The juggler, ’tis true, with his licentious story, and the dissolute tragetour, both are gone—they would be handcuffed now, and put in gaol. This speaks something for a higher cultivation. But, after all, may not this be a mere outside refinement—a refinement to meet the requirements of an age in which the head is educated more than the heart—a refinement which may be had in our shops—the refinement, in fact, of the lowest of God’s endowed creatures, that of the exquisite? This is, indeed, an artificial age, and it warns us to see to it whether we are hypocrites or no; whether our life is entirely external or the reverse; whether it is all shell and no kernel, all the outside cup and platter, and within naught save extortion and excess. That mortal shall have attained the highest wisdom who, in the light of the world to come, shall have seen to the cleansing of that which is within, and if that, if the heart be cleansed, then the external life will as naturally, as it will of necessity, be pure.

317