188 
of Caricature 
and 
G7"0fc_'fQu6 
1 
CHAPTER 
MINSTRELSY A SUBJECT OF BURLESQUE AND CARICATURE.-CHARACTER 
OF TI-IE MINSTRELS.1THEIR JOKES UPON THEMSELVES AND UPON ONE 
ANOTHER.-VARIOUS MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS REPRESENTED IN THE, 
SCULPTURES OF THE MEDIEVAL ARTISTS.--SIR MATTHEW GOURNAY 
AND THE KING OF  OF THE TABOR AND BAG- 
PIPES." 
-MERMAIDS. 
0NE of the principal claifes of the fatirifts of the middle ages, the 
minitrels, or jougleurs, were far from being unamenable to fatire 
themfelves. They belonged generally to a low clafs of the population, 
one that was hardly acknowledged by the law, which merely adminiltered 
to the pleafures and amufements of others, and, though fometimes 
liberally rewarded, they were objects rather of contempt than of refpect. 
Of courfe there were rninllrels belonging to a clafs more refpectable than 
the others, but thefe were comparatively few ; and the ordinary minilrel 
feems to have been {imply an unprincipled vagabond, who hardly 
poiTeH'ed any fettled relting-place, who wandered about from place to 
place, and was not too nice as to the means by which he gained his 
living-perhaps fairly reprefented by the {treet minftrel, or mountebank, 
of the prefent day. One of his talents was that of mocking and ridiculing 
others, and it is not to be wondered at, therefore, if he fometimes became 
an object of mockery and ridicule himfelf. One of the well-known 
minftrels of the thirteenth century, Rutebeuf, was, like many of his 
fellows, a poet alfo, and he has left feveral fhort pieces of verfe defcriptive 
of himfelf and of his own mode oflife. In one of thefe he complains of 
his poverty, and tells us that the world had in his time-the reign of 
St. Louis-become fo degenerate, that few people gave anything to the 
unfortunate minilzrel. According to his own account, he was without 
food,