United States or United States Minor Outlying Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When the eating at length was done, the centre of the hall was cleared, and while men drank, the minstrels made music. All were very merry with wine and strong ale, and talk arose among them as to which of these brethren Sir Godwin or Sir Wulf was the more brave, the more handsome, and the more learned and courteous.
The parallel passages in Homer, on one side, and the Old Irish Tain Bo Cualgne, and the Anglo-Saxon epics, are so numerous and close that the theory of borrowing from Homer has actually occurred to a distinguished Greek scholar. But no student of Irish and Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry has been found, I think, to suggest that Early Irish and Anglo-Saxon Court minstrels knew Greek.
"To heralds and to minstrels, then, leave thy praise, Sir Knight," replied Rowena, "more suiting for their mouths than for thine own; and tell me which of them shall record in song, or in book of tourney, the memorable conquest of this night, a conquest obtained over an old man, followed by a few timid hinds; and its booty, an unfortunate maiden, transported against her will to the castle of a robber?"
During this time Wasoga minstrels, playing on tambira, and accompanied by boys playing on a harmonicon, kept us amused; and a small page, with a large bundle of grass, came to me and said, "The king hopes you won't be offended if required to sit on it before him; for no person in Uganda, however high in office, is ever allowed to sit upon anything raised above the ground, nor can anybody but himself sit upon such grass as this; it is all that his throne is made of.
Thus the Iliad existed with its characteristics that are prior to 800 B.C., and in its present compass, and was renowned before 800 B.C. As it could not possibly have thus existed in the repertoire of irresponsible strolling minstrels and reciters, and as there is no evidence for a college, school, or guild which preserved the Epic by a system of mnemonic teaching, while no one can deny at least the possibility of written texts, we are driven to the hypothesis that written texts there were, whence descended, for example, the text of Athens.
We have been out nearly every evening once to Hengler's and once to the Christy Minstrels, and last night to the Pantomime, where papa was so pleased with the clown that he sent round afterwards and asked him to dine here on Sunday, when Sir Benjamin and Lady Bangle and Alderman Fishwick are coming. Won't it be jolly to see a clown close to? Should you think he'd come in his evening dress?
Hark! once more that long clarion call: it is the last time the very last; for all the others have sung a dozen times apiece and have gone to sleep again. So would this one have done, but cocks, like minstrels among men, are vain creatures, and some kind officious fairy whispered in his ear that there was an appreciative listener hard by, and so to please me he sang, just one stave more.
She would look down at you over the top of her specs and tell you how the street minstrels in England used to stand out in the snow and sing, and be brought into the house and given a warm mug and a bite to eat going from house to house all through the early night ...
But even a wrong will finds its way, and little Elene grew up wondering why people were so unkind to her; and why there was so much sadness in the world, for when all else failed the minstrels could make her weep by singing of "old, unhappy far-off things, and battles long-ago."
There was no corrosion, he said to himself, like the memory of an ugly deed. But the experiences of the last few days had tended to throw him into the past, and for once he gave himself up to it. Presently there came to him the sound of a banjo not an unusual thing at Herridon. It had its mock negro minstrels, whom, hearing, Telford was anxious to offend.
Word Of The Day