The accounts of fourteenth-century barons abound in mention of minstrels, acrobats, “joueurs d’espertise,” “joueurs de la corde,” “chanteurs et chanteresses,” and all the motley crew.[60] Every castle was glad to extend its hospitality to wayfarers of every kind, for they brought news and amusement, and renewed the worn-out stock of gossip. Two little pictures of people of this sort occur to me as I am writing. One is a sketch of the Welsh or Breton harper, from the poem of Renart. When Renart, disguised as a jongleur, offered to sing to Isengrin his lays of the Round Table, he put on a strange jargon, and proceeded to tell his story in almost unintelligible French-- “‘Je fot saver bon lai Breton Et di Merlin et di Foucon Del Roi Artus, et de Tristan Del Chievrefoil, et Saint Brandan.’ ... ‘Et sais-tu le Lai Dan Iset?’.... ‘Ya-ia!’ dit il. ‘Godistouët!’” (God is to wit?) Wrapped in their weather-beaten mantle, shaggy, ridiculous, singing much as sings Hans Breitmann to-day, it is thus (according to M. Joseph Bédier[61]) that we must picture the minstrels who sang of Tristan and Yseult. Probably they used their strange, absurd prose merely as a medium to explain the story to their hearers in much such a _chante-fable_ as “Aucassin et Nicolette,” while they sang their lyrics in their Celtic tongue to the music of their harps. And if the voice is sweet, after all, the language is of little consequence. Our other tiny idyl is drawn from the arrival of the pedlar at the castle of the Lady of Fayel. That hapless and guilty lady, desirous at all risks to meet her noble lover, bids the Chastelain de Coucy don the pedlar’s garb in order to approach her. He puts on rough laced boots and a coat of coarse cloth, on his head a torn and battered hat, a stick in his hand, a pack upon his back. He comes to the castle and undoes his wares: “car mercier Porte en tous lieus son panier Et en salles et en maisons S’ebate en toutes saisons.” The lady and her maidens stand round and pick and choose, praise this, bargain for that, choose and discard in true feminine fashion. “Ont maintes choses barguigné Et li aucuns ont acheté Ce que leur vint à volonté.” But when the pack is strapped again, the pedlar murmurs that it is late. “And it rains!” cries the Dame de Fayel. So the packman stays all night at the castle, and my lady finds means to get speech with her lover.