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dreadful old British Bards, with their wicker cages and human 
victims. All that I wish to point out, is the supreme influence 
which they possessed over the people. Barbarians, as the Britons 
were, the influence of music upon them was great. The love of 
music is a natural instinct ; and no tribe, however rude, is destitute 
of music. They hear it in the winds and waters, in the woods 
and plains, and kindred chords vibrate within them, which must 
perforce find expression in voice or instrument. 
These Bards, like the Scalds, “or polishers of language” of 
the Danish tribes, were not only the poets and musicians of the 
period, but the moralisers and theologians: their duty was not 
only to amuse, but to instruct. What their music was we cannot 
tell; rude, no doubt, but scarcely ruder than their audience. 
Whatever it was, it helped to nerve the courage of their warriors, 
and aided them in a long and stubborn conflict with the rulers of 
the world. 
Leaving them, we will travel onward nearly eight hundred 
years, to the period of the Heptarchy, when Britain became 
England, and when our history as a nation really begins. 
All the Teutonic nations—whether Angles, Saxons, Danes, or 
Norse—were eminently musical. The music of the battle-field, 
and that of the feast, were equally dear to them; and their 
monarchs patronized it after a very royal fashion. With these 
Teuton tribes came the Minstrels, or Gleemen, who composed and 
sang to the music of the harp effusions recounting the valiant* 
deeds of their heroes. Differing from the British Bard and the 
Danish Scald, their only aim was to divert and entertain ; and their 
ministrelsy was often accompanied with mimicry and feats of 
strength, or sleight of hand. No feast was complete without their 
presence ; they were ever welcomed in cottage or palace, and 
rarely left without a handsome reward. As long as the old 
spirit of chivalry remained, their popularity continued ; but at the 
close of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, they had fallen so low in public 
estimation, that a Statute included them among ‘the rogues, 
vagabonds, and sturdy beggars,” and dealt with them accordingly. 
This woeful falling off in popularity, was owing, no doubt, partly 
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