LE BARDE

Page 13. The Bard is known under the title of The Minstrcl or The Harpcr's Song, and is from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.

In the middle âges the minstrels were a class who devoted themselves to the amusement of the great, in castle or camp, by singing ballads or songs of love or war, generally to the accompaniment of some musical instrument. The intermediate class of professional musicians from which the later minstrels sprang appeared in France as early as the eighth century. By the Norman conquest they were introduced into England, and became assimilated with the Anglo- Saxon gleemen. In England, in 1597, they were classed by a statute with rogues and vagabonds; in France their guild was maintained until the révolution.