474 
ENGLISH BALLAD-SINGERS, 
English Ballad-Singers. 
The minstrels were once a great and flourishing body in England ; 
but their dignity being interwoven with the illusory splendours of 
feudal institutions, declined in proportion to the advance of moral 
cultivation : they became in time vulgar mountebanks and jugglers, 
and in the reign of Elizabeth — the reign of robust intellect — they 
were absolutely suppressed as rogues and vagabonds. Banished from 
the streets and highways, they fled to alehouses, and followed the 
trades of fiddlers and pipers : minstrelsy was no longer known in Eng- 
land. The instruments so long in use by this order of musicians 
would now astonish by their number, and the rudeness of their plan 
and fabric. There has not been for an age any trace of this peculiar 
order, if we except the instance of a man well known in Derbyshire, 
who appeared at the close of the last century in the streets of the 
metropolis with the canister and string, singing the fine old ballad of 
Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanour. From the earliest times songs were 
chanted in our streets ; but before the reign of Elizabeth they were 
invariably accompanied by the sound of some musical instrument. 
The suppression of the minstrel order was followed by the rise of 
the ballad-singers — a race that relied for success exclusively on the 
merits of their voices. This revolution, though a curious part of 
knowledge, is scarcely distinguished, or not alleged with sufficient 
stress, in most of our histories of literature. The subjects of many 
of the songs handed down by the minstrels, were still held in honour 
by the ballad-singers. The feats of Clym of the Clough, Randle of 
Chester, and Sir Topaz, grown faded under the keeping of the min- 
strels, were now refreshed, and brought more boldly before the sense, 
in the new version. Robin Hood had his honours enlarged under the 
new dynasty — more maidens, more heroes than ever, wept at and were 
inspired by the history of his fortunes. Drayton’s allusion to the 
propagation of Robin’s fame may give an idea of the diffusion of the 
ballad-singers. 
“ In this our spacious isle I think there is not one, 
But he hath heard some talk of him and little John ; 
And to the end of time the tales shall ne’er be done, 
Of Scarlock, George-a-Green, and Muck the Miller’s son.” 
The new race — the ballad singers — started with a full tide of popu- 
larity : they had the glory of being opposed by, and triumphing over, 
the unanimous hostility of the votaries of the Muses, from the highest 
to the least worthy. The poets of the first rank confessed their 
uneasiness at the success of the innovators. Of this fact we have 
abundant evidence in Spenser’s Tears of the Muses — and even the 
supreme Shakespeare himself would bring their calling into contempt. 
It is worth while to attend to the grounds of difference between the 
minstrels and their more simple successors. The former were the 
creatures of feudal vanity, and adopted some very degrading notions 
of government, both domestic and politic : — the ballad-singers 
addressed themselves to the people ; they courted no obligation from 
the rich— they wore no livery of the great — they moved in independ- 
