‘_L’uns fet l’ivre, l’autre le sot_’ says the _fabliau_; and indeed we do not need the testimony of Thomas de Cabham or of John of Salisbury to conclude that such buffoonery was likely to be of a ribald type[289]. Even in the high places of minstrelsy there was some measure of variety. A glance at the pay-sheet of Edward I’s Whitsuntide feast will show that the minstrels who aspired to be musicians were habitually distinguished by the name of the musical instrument on which they played. They are _vidulatores_, _citharistae_, _trumpatores_, _vilours_, _gigours_, _crouderes_, _harpours_, _citolers_, _lutours_, _trumpours_, _taboreurs_ and the like. The harp (_cithara_), played by twitching the strings, had been the old instrument of the Teutons, but in the Middle Ages it came second in popularity to the _vielle_ (_vidula_), which was also a string instrument, but, like the modern fiddle, was played with a bow. The drum (_tympanum_, _tabour_) was, as we have seen, somewhat despised, and relegated to the mimes. The trumpeters appear less often singly than in twos and threes, and it is possible that their performances may have been mainly ceremonial and of a purely instrumental order. But the use of music otherwise than to accompany the voice does not seem to have gone, before the end of the thirteenth century, much beyond the signals, flourishes and fanfares required for wars, triumphs and processions. Concerted instrumental music was a later development[290]. The ordinary function of the harp or _vielle_ in minstrelsy was to assist the voice of the minstrel in one of the many forms of poetry which the middle ages knew. These were both lyric and narrative. The distinction is roughly parallel to that made by Thomas de Cabham when he subdivides his highest grades of minstrels into those who sing wanton songs at taverns, and those more properly called _ioculatores_ who solace the hearts of men with reciting the deeds of the heroes and the lives of the saints. The themes of mediaeval lyric, as of all lyric, are largely wantonness and wine; but it must be borne in mind that Thomas de Cabham’s classification is primarily an ethical one, and does not necessarily imply any marked difference of professional status between the two classes. The haunters of taverns and the solacers of the virtuous were after all the same minstrels, or at least minstrels of the same order. That the _chansons_, in their innumerable varieties, caught up from folk-song, or devised by Provençal ingenuity, were largely in the mouths of the minstrels, may be taken for granted. It was here, however, that the competition of _trobaire_ and _trouvère_ began earliest, and proved most triumphant, and the supreme minstrel _genre_ was undoubtedly the narrative. This was, in a sense, their creation, and in it they held their own, until the laity learned to read and the _trouvères_ became able to eke out the shortness of their memories by writing down or printing their stories.