English Surnames: Their Sources and SignificationsBardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
History
English Surnames: Their Sources and Significations
Bardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
Names, English; Names, Personal -- English
Singing he was, or floyting alle the day,
He was as freshe as is the month of May.
There is one name I must mention here, that of ‘Peter le Organer,’[312]
perhaps connected with ‘Orger’ of the same date. The owner of this more
modern-looking term may either have been organist at some monastery or
abbey-church, or he may have played upon the portable regal, in which
latter case he too might possibly have been seen here. But ‘organ’ was a
very general term. In the old psalters it seems to have been used for
nearly every species of instrument. We should scarcely speak now of
‘hanging up our “organs” upon the willows,’ but so an old version of the
Psalms has it. Did we not know they were a modern invention we might
have been inclined to suspect ‘le Organer’ to have been but a strolling
performer upon the ‘hurdy-gurdy.’ That, however, was an infliction
mercifully spared to our forefathers. In concluding this brief survey of
mediæval music, I cannot, I think, do better than quote, as I have done
partially once before, Robert de Brunne’s account of the coronation of
King Arthur, wherein we shall find many, if not most, of the
professional characters I have been mentioning familiarly spoken of. He
says—
Jogelours weren there enow
That their quaintise forthe drew:
Minstrels many with divers glew (glee)
Sounds of bemes (trumps) that men blew,
Harpes, pipes, and tabours,
Fithols (fiddles), citolles (cymbals), sautreours,
Belles, chimès and synfan
Other enow and some I cannot name.
Songsters that merry sung,
Sound of glee over all rung;
Disours enow telled fables:
And some played with dice at tables.
But we are not without traces of the troubadour. The simple vocalist, a
strolling professionalist, too, in many instances, remains hale and
hearty in our ‘Glemans,’ ‘Gleemans,’ and ‘Glemmans,’ not to mention our
‘Sangsters.’ Amid such lulls as might intervene, we should hear them at
the popular festivals bidding for favour with their old-fashioned
stories of ‘hawk and hound,’ and ‘my ladyes bower,’ set, no doubt, to
airs equally _à la mode_. A contemporary poet tells us their song
Hath been sung at festivals
On ember eves, and holy-ales.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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