618 Ancient Sports and Pastimes. 
The bards exercised a very great influence upon the . 
minds of the Britons by their spirit-stirring poems, which 
they sung to the accompaniment of a kind of lyre or harp. 
We know how this influence survived among the Welch, 
so much so that Edward I. is said to have ordered a mas- 
sacre of the bards, in order that his conquest of Wales 
might be facilitated, and the people, missing the inspiriting 
strains which had fired them to deeds of martial heroism, 
might fall an easier prey to his arms. In this hard, prac- 
tical age of business and money-getting, when everything 
seems to proceed at railroad pace, and our heads are full of 
what is going on in the remotest parts of the earth, it is 
difficult to understand the extent to which our ancestors 
were influenced by music and poetry. It is said that when 
two hostile tribes of Britons were drawn up in battle array, 
the bards often stepped in between the armies, and so 
melted them with their soft and fascinating strains, that 
they threw down their arms, and became friends instead 
of enemies. | 
The musicians of the Saxons were the same as the 
Scalds of the ancient northern nations; they composed 
poems, and sang them to the harp; but they diversified 
their musical performances with dances and feats of 
jugglery, from which circumstance they were called glee- 
men. They went about the country in companies, they 
were received at the courts of kings and in the houses of 
nobles, and their persons were held sacred and free from 
_molestation. In the wars between the Danes and Saxons 
the glee-man had equal access to both camps; and this is 
well illustrated by the popular story of King Alfred, who, 
in the disguise of a minstrel, made his way into the Danish 
camp, and took note of the numbers and habits of the 
enemy. The feats of the Saxon glee-men were probably 
much the same as those practised by itinerant jugglers in 
the present day, such as throwing up and catching knives 
and balls ; they were often accompanied by a bear, which 
they taught to dance. 
After the Norman Conquest the name of minstrels was 
substituted for that of glee-men ; the minstrels were called 
rhymers, singers, story-tellers, jugglers, relaters of heroic 
actions, buffoons, and troubadours or poets, according to 
the particular branch of the profession they practised. The 
troubadours were a genuine importation from the south of 
France ; they spoke the Romance language, which was 
derived from the Latin, and was the parent of French; 
