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Source: London Labour and the London Poor Henry Mayhew (1861) Of Ancient and Modern Street Ballad MinstrelsyIn the reigns subsequent to the Norman Conquest the minstrels were permitted to perform in the rich monasteries, and in the mansions of the nobility, which they frequently visited in large parties, and especially upon occasions of festivity. They entered the castles without the least ceremony, rarely waiting for any previous invitation, and there exhibited their performances for the entertainment of the lord of the mansion and his guests. They were, it seems, admitted without any difficulty, and handsomely rewarded for the exertion of their talents.The minstrels then, indeed, constituted the theatre, the opera, and the concert of the powerful and wealthy. The themes of the minstrels were the triumphs, victories, pageants, and great events of the day; commingled with the praise, or the satire of individuals, as the humour of the patron or of the audience might be gratified. It is stated that Bishop Longchamp, the favourite and justiciary of Richard Coeur-de-lion, not only engaged poets to make songs and poems in his praise, but the best singers and minstrels to sing them in the public streets! The large gratuities collected by these artists not only occasioned great numbers to join their fraternity, but also induced many idle and dissipated persons to assume the characters of minstrels, to the disgrace of the profession. These evils became at last so notorious, that in the reign of King Edward II. it was thought necessary to restrain them by a public edict. It states, that many indolent persons, under the colour of minstrelsy, intruded themselves into the residences of the wealthy, where they had both meat and drink, but were not contented without the addition of large gifts from the householder. To restrain this abuse, the mandate ordains, that no person should resort to the houses of prelates, earls, or barons, to eat, or to drink, who was not a professed minstrel; nor more than three or four minstrels of honour at most in one day, except they came by invitation from the lord of the house. Those functionaries seem to have gradually fallen in the estimation of the public. A writer of the period (1589) represents the (still-styled) minstrels, singing ballads and small popular musickes for the amusement of boys and others that passe by them in the streete. It is related also that their matters were for the most part stories of old time; as the tale of Sir Topas, Bevis of Southampton, Guy of Warwick, Adam Bell, and Clymme of the Clough, and such other old romances or historical rhymes, made purposely for the recreation of the common people at Christmas dinners and bride ales, and in tavernes and alehouses, and such other places of base resort. From this historical sketch it appears evident that the ballad-singer and seller of to-day is the sole descendant, or remains, of the minstrel of old, as regards the business of the streets; he is, indeed, the minstrel having lost caste, and being driven to play cheap. The themes of the minstrels were wars, and victories, and revolutions; so of the modern man of street ballads. If the minstrel celebrated with harp and voice the unhorsings, the broken bones, the deaths, the dust, the blood, and all the glory and circumstance of a tournament, - so does the ballad-seller, with voice and fiddle, glorify the feelings, the broken bones, the blood, the deaths, and all the glory and circumstance of a prize-fight. The minstrel not rarely received a largesse to satirize some one obnoxious to a rival, or to a disappointed man. I was told by a clever chaunter, that he had been sent lately by a strange gentleman to sing a song - which he and his mate (a patterer) happened at the time to be working - in front of a neighbouring house. The song was on the rogueries of the turf; and the move had a doubly advantageous effect. One gentleman, you see, sir, gave us 1s. to go and sing; and afore we'd well finished the chorus, somebody sent us from the house another 1s. to go away agin. In the persons of some of these modern street professionals are united the functions of the poet, the songster, and the musician. So in the days of yore. In one respect the analogy between the two ages of these promoters of street enjoyment does not hold. The minstrel's garb was distinctive. The king's and queen's minstrels wore the royal livery, the minstrels of the great barons also assumed their patron's liveries. The ballad-singer of the present day wears no particular dress. During the terrors of the reign of Henry VIII., and after the Reformation, a large body of the minstrels fell into meanness of attire; and in that respect the modern ballad-singer is analogous. How long `Sir Topas' and the other old stories continued to be sung in the streets there are no means of ascertaining. But there are old songs, as I ascertained from an intelligent and experienced street-singer, still occasionally heard in the open air, but more in the country than the metropolis. Among those still heard, however rarely, are the Earl of Dorset's song, written on the night before a naval engagement with the Dutch, in 1665:
I give the titles of the others - `A Cobbler there was, and he liv'd in a Stall;' Parnell's song of `My Days have been so wond'rous Free,' now sung in the streets to the tune of Gramachree; the `Children in the Wood' and `Chevy-chase;' a song about the Cock-lane Ghost; `Gilderoy was a Bonnie Boy.' Barbara Allen's selling yet, I was told.
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