No wonder they welcomed the return of the bright, warm days, when they could resume their gay, adventurous, open-air life, in the fresh, flowery meadows, and the wide, green forest glades; roaming to town and village, castle and monastery, feast and tournament; alone, or in company with a band of brother minstrels; meeting by the way with gay knights adventurous, or pilgrims not less gay--if they were like those of Chaucer's company; welcomed everywhere by priest and abbot, lord and loon. These are the sort of strains which they carolled as they rested under the white hawthorn, and carelessly tinkled an accompaniment on their harps:-- "Merry is th' enté of May; The fowles maketh merry play; The time is hot, and long the day. The joyful nightingale singeth, In the grene mede flowers springeth. * * * * "Merry it is in somer's tide; Fowles sing in forest wide; Swaines gin on justing ride, Maidens liffen hem in pride." The minstrels were often men of position and wealth. Rayer, or Raherus, the first of the king's minstrels whom we meet with after the Conquest, founded the Priory and Hospital of St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, London, in the third year of Henry I., A.D. 1102, and became the first prior of his own foundation. He was not the only minstrel who turned religious. Foulquet de Marseille, first a merchant, then a minstrel of note--some of his songs have descended to these days--at length turned monk, and was made abbot of Tournet, and at length Archbishop of Toulouse, and is known in history as the persecutor of the Albigenses: he died in 1231 A.D. It seems to have been no unusual thing for men of family to take up the wandering, adventurous life of the minstrel, much as others of the same class took up the part of knight adventurous; they frequently travelled on horseback, with a servant to carry their harp; flocking to courts and tournaments, where the graceful and accomplished singer of chivalrous deeds was perhaps more caressed than the large-limbed warrior who achieved them; and obtained large rewards, instead of huge blows, for his guerdon.