Besides the Saxons, there were the Kelts. In the provinces of France that bordered on Armorica, in the English counties that marched with Wales, the Keltic harper is no unusual or negligible figure. Whether such minstrels ranked very high in the bardic hierarchy of their own peoples may be doubted; but amid alien folk they achieved popularity[297]. Both Giraldus Cambrensis and Thomas the author of _Tristan_ speak of a certain _famosus fabulator_ of this class, Bledhericus or Breri by name[298]. Through Breri and his like the Keltic traditions filtered into Romance literature, and an important body of scholars are prepared to find in _lais_ sung to a Welsh or Breton harp the _origines_ of Arthurian romance[299]. In England the Welsh, like the English-speaking minstrels, had a political, as well as a literary significance. They were the means by which the spirit of Welsh disaffection under English rule was kept alive, and at times fanned into a blaze. The fable of the massacre of the bards by Edward I is now discredited, but an ordinance of his against Keltic ‘bards and rhymers’ is upon record, and was subsequently repeated under Henry IV[300]. An important question now presents itself. How far, in this heterogeneous welter of mediaeval minstrelsy, is it possible to distinguish any elements which can properly be called dramatic? The minstrels were entertainers in many _genres_. Were they also actors? An answer may be sought first of all in their literary remains. The first condition of drama is dialogue, and dialogue is found both in lyric and in narrative minstrelsy. Naturally, it is scantiest in lyric. But there is a group of _chansons_ common to northern France and to southern France or Provence, which at least tended to develop in this direction. There are the _chansons à danser_, which are frequently a semi-dialogue between a soloist and a chorus, the one singing the verses, the other breaking into a burden or refrain. There are the _chansons à personnages_ or _chansons de mal mariée_, complaints of unhappy wives, which often take the form of a dialogue between the woman and her husband, her friend or, it may be, the poet, occasionally that of a discussion on courtly love in general. There are the _aubes_, of which the type is the morning dialogue between woman and lover adapted by Shakespeare with such splendid effect in the third act of _Romeo and Juliet_. And finally there are the _pastourelles_, which are generally dialogues between a knight and a shepherdess, in which the knight makes love and, successful or repulsed, rides away. All these _chansons_, like the _chansons d’histoire_ or _de toile_, which did not develop into dialogues, are, in the form in which we have them, of minstrel origin. But behind them are probably folk-songs of similar character, and M. Gaston Paris is perhaps right in tracing them to the _fêtes du mai_, those agricultural festivals of immemorial antiquity in which women traditionally took so large a part.