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Minstrels |
In the late Middle Ages, as power shifted from local barons to a new king, the singers and poets left their castles and followed the festivals from market to market, singing for anyone who had a penny. In their brightly colored costumes, they juggled and leaped, danced, and played. They sang populist songs of love and murder, the rich abusing the poor, and brave outlaws being hanged. Local Lords were always strong, Ladies were always beautiful, and the deaths were always bloody. Over the next few hundred years, the songs followed the English people to Ireland, America, and Australia and became part of those cultures as well, still being sung today.
Among the silly rhymes, ballads, and doggerel of the time stands this simple extraordinary poem, one of the most moving in our literature.
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Immortal Poets: Their Lives and Verse, by Christopher Burns |