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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
Dr. Percy, in that part of the Essay on the Ancient English Minstrels, prefixed to his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which concerns the state and condition of these people in the Saxon times, previous to the Norman conquest, has given us, in my opinion, a false, or at best, an ill-grounded idea of their rank and condition within that period. This imaginary notion, for such I take it to be, I propose to discuss in the shortest manner I can.
page 103 note [a] Spelman's Life of Aelfred, p. 199.
page 103 note [b] Some late author, I may venture to say; for there is nothing of it in the older ones. Grimbald, artis musicae peritissimus, was an Abbat. Ingulph. p. 27, and Chanter, i. e. cantator. Asserius, p. 47. John also was a monk. Spelman, p. 137.
page 104 note [c] Rapin, p. 92. Carte, p. 299.
page 105 note [f] Anlaf has no servant to carry his instrument.
page 106 note [g] Minstrel, it is presumed, is a French or Spanish word, but should it come from 
(see Junius) it would not come up to the present purpose.
page 106 note [h] No author that was acquainted with the Latin word musicus, as Malmesbury undoubtedly was. See him, p. 48. Ingulphus also, p. 27, has the expression.
page 106 note [i] Aelfred was of a suitable age for it being about twenty-nine.
