In Germany the _fahrende Sänger_ or _Spielmann_, whether a native who had travelled in many lands or a singer of foreign birth, was sure to find his way into the remotest huts of the countryside. He brought with him new tunes and took with him those that he heard at the fireside that had given him hospitality. In this way the stock of tunes handed down from father to son and from mother to daughter was in every generation enlarged by acquisitions from without. The minstrel was the medium of musical exchange between the town and the country, between the several provinces and between different nations. He was the middleman and the teacher, through whom echoes of the songs of Norse skalds, Welsh and Irish bards, and French and Provençal singers reached the German people and _vice versa_. He was especially popular in England, where numerous instances are quoted of minstrels appearing at royal weddings and other great functions, not only individually but in large numbers, and being so richly rewarded for their services that the church complained because they were better paid than priests. Individual German sovereigns also seem to have appreciated their skill and distinguished them by marks of favor. In 1355 Emperor Charles IV appointed one Johann der Fiedler '_rex omnium histriorum_’ for the archbishopric of Mayence, and thirty years later another minstrel, the piper Brachte, bore the official title _Künig der farenden Lüte_ (King of the wayfarers). In France, too, the vagrant appears as the original type of popular singer. He ran from one end of the land to the other. Received and even invited by the great lords he went from castle to castle, his head filled with songs, or his pockets with parchments--if, indeed, he could read. Perchance he would stop in the common of some village, play a few stray _arpeggios_ on his viol, and, having collected an enthusiastic audience, sing a _complainte_, the adventures of a favorite hero, or perhaps recount the story of a celebrated crime, embellished with horrifying details. Again he might sing a love romance, or even a scriptural _légende_--the 'Prodigal Son’ or some other parable, the life of a saint, or the Passion of our Lord.