When men of importance were travelling they sometimes had the pleasure of hearing minstrels at the inn, and in that manner whiled away the long empty evenings. In the curious manual already quoted, called “La manière de langage,” composed in French by an Englishman of the fourteenth century, the traveller of distinction is represented listening to the musicians at the inn, and mingling his voice at need with their music: “Then,” says our author, “come forward into the lord’s presence the trumpeters and horn-blowers with their frestels (pipes) and clarions, and begin to play and blow very loud, and then the lord with his squires begin to move, to sway, to dance, to utter and sing fine carols till midnight without ceasing.”[262] In great houses minstrels’ music was the usual seasoning of meals. At table there are only two amusements, {203} says Langland, in his “Visions”: to listen to the minstrels, and, when they are silent, to talk religion and to scoff at its mysteries.[263] The repasts which Sir Gawain takes at the house of his host the Green Knight are enlivened with songs and music. On the second day the amusement extends till after supper; they listen during the meal and after it to many noble songs, such as Christmas carols and new songs, with all possible mirth: “Mony athel songez, As coundutes of kryst-masse, and carolez newe, With all the manerly merthe that mon may of telle.” On the third day, “With merthe and mynstralsye, with metez at hor wylle, Thay maden as mery as any men moghten.”[264] In Chaucer’s “Squire’s Tale,” King Cambynskan gives a “Feste so solempne and so riche That in this worlde ne was ther noon it liche.” And this prince is shown sitting after the third course among his nobles, listening to the music: “. . . So bifelle after the thridde cours, Whil that the kyng sit thus in his nobleye, Herkyng his mynstrales her thinges pleye Byforn him atte boord deliciously. . . .” During all these meals the sound of the viol, the voice of the singers, the “delicious things” of the minstrels, were interrupted, it is true, by the crunching of the bones {204} gnawed by the dogs under the tables, by the quarrels of the same, or by the sharp cry of some ill-bred falcon; for many noblemen kept during dinner these favourite birds on a perch behind them. Their masters, enjoying their presence, were indulgent with the liberties they took.