Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Texts
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- Introduction: The Minstrel Rides Out
- 1 The Minstrel of Tamworth and His Audiences
- 2 The Stanleys, The Stanley Poem, and the Campaign of 1558
- 3 Ashmole 48 and Its History
- 4 The Hunting of the Cheviot and the Battle of Otterburn
- 5 ‘More than with a Trumpet’: Tudor Responses to the Cheviot Ballads
- 6 The Lay of the Last Minstrel
- Appendix: Five Poems Bearing the Name of Richard Sheale
- Bibliography
- Index
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
6 - The Lay of the Last Minstrel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Texts
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- Introduction: The Minstrel Rides Out
- 1 The Minstrel of Tamworth and His Audiences
- 2 The Stanleys, The Stanley Poem, and the Campaign of 1558
- 3 Ashmole 48 and Its History
- 4 The Hunting of the Cheviot and the Battle of Otterburn
- 5 ‘More than with a Trumpet’: Tudor Responses to the Cheviot Ballads
- 6 The Lay of the Last Minstrel
- Appendix: Five Poems Bearing the Name of Richard Sheale
- Bibliography
- Index
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
Summary
The way was long, the wind was cold,
The Minstrel was infirm and old;
His wither'd cheek, and tresses gray,
Seem'd to have known a better day;
The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy.
The last of all the Bards was he,
Who sung of Border chivalry;
For, welladay! their date was fled,
His tuneful brethren all were dead;
And he, neglected and oppress'd,
Wish'd to be with them, and at rest.
No more on prancing palfrey borne,
He caroll'd, light as lark at morn;
No longer courted and caress'd,
High placed in hall, a welcome guest,
He pour'd to lord and lady gay
The unpremeditated lay:
Old times were changed, old manners gone;
A stranger fill'd the Stuarts' throne;
The bigots of the iron time
Had call'd his harmless art a crime.
A wandering Harper, scorn'd and poor,
He begg'd his bread from door to door,
And tuned, to please a peasant's ear,
The harp a king had loved to hear.
Walter Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel is one of the most forceful expressions of the romantic nostalgia that has infused the history of minstrelsy, almost, it would seem, from its beginning. For those who come after, the minstrel provides a link to the oral tradition, but the link is always tenuous, the tradition imperilled and the organic community in which it flourished in decline.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Songs and Travels of a Tudor MinstrelRichard Sheale of Tamworth, pp. 158 - 163Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012