in 
and Art. 
Literature 
195 
L 
infirument which is named in one of the above extracts, and in fome 
other mediaeval writers, a clzg'17bnie, and which has been fuppofed to be 
the dulcimer, that had fallen into difcredit in the fourteenth century. 
This inftrument is introduced in a fiory which is found in Cuvelicr's 
metrical hiitory of the celebrated warrior Bertrand du Guefclin. In the 
courfe of the war for the expuliion of Pedro the Cruel from the throne of 
Caitile, an Engliih knight, Sir Matthew Gournay, was fent as a fpecial 
ambaffador to the court of Portugal. The Portuguefe monarch had in his 
fervice two minftrels whofe performances he vaunted greatly, and on 
whom he fet great Iiore, and he infiiied on their performing in the 
prefence of the new ambaH'ador. It turned out that they played on the 
inftrument juit mentioned, and Sir Matthew Gournay could not refrain 
from laughing at the performance. When the king preffed him to give 
his opinion, he faid, with more regard for truth than politenefs, " In 
France and Normandy, the initruments your minftrels play upon are 
regarded with contempt, and are only in ufe among beggars and blind 
people, fo that they are popularly called beggar's inilruments." The king, 
we are told, took great offence at the bluntnefs of his Engliih guefi. 
The fiddle itfelf appears at this time to have been gradually {inking in 
credit, and the poets complained that a degraded tafte for more vulgar 
mufical inttruments was introducing itfelf. Among thefe we may mention 
efpecially the pipe and tabor. The French antiquary, M. Jubinal, in a 
very valuable collection of early popular poetry, publiihed under the title 
of".Tongleurs et Trouveres," has printed a curious poem of the thirteenth 
or fourteenth century, intended as a proteft againtt the ufe of the tabor 
and the bagpipes, which he charaeterifes as properly the mufical intim- 
ments of the peafantry. Yet people then, he fays, were becoming to 
befotted on fuch inftruments, that they introduced them in places where 
better rninftrelfy would be more fuitable. The Writer thinks that the 
introduction of lb vulgar an inftrument as the tabor into grand fefiivals 
could be looked upon in no other light than as one of the figns which 
might be expected to be the precurfors of the coming of Antichrilt. " If 
fuch people are to come to grand fefiivals as carry a bufhel  a tabor 
made in the form of a buihel meafure, on the end of which they beat], 
and