“Streke vp, harper, and make gode chere,nAnd wher that I goo, fere or nere.nTo owre husbondes make thou no [boste.”]n”Nay, mastres, as motte I thee,nYe schall newyr be wrayed for me;nI had leuer her dede to be,nAs hereof to be knowe.”nThey fylled the pottes by and by;nThey lett not for no coste trully;nThe harpyr stroke vpe merrely.nThat they myght onethe blowe.nSo the gossips dance and drink. When the time comes tonadd up the “scot” and go home, they find that theirnmerriment has been quite costly — sixpence each. They gonhome by roundabout ways and later tell their husbands thatnthey have been to church.nWe know little in an exact musical sense about harpnmusic and its uses. The notation of music developednslowly and for a long time was almost entirely a craft of thenchurch musicians, the only musicians who were bothnlearned and, in a sense, professional. The surviving manuscriptsnof medieval church music far outnumber the fewnmanuscripts of secular songs with musical notation. As fornharp music — if it was notated — practically nothing survives.nGustave Reese, in his Music in the Middle Ages,nrefers to only one manuscript of harp music — a manuscriptnin the British Museum “containing Welsh harp music,nreputedly of great antiquity.” Reese also interprets a passagenin Caesar’s Gallic Wars as meaning that the Druid bards ofnthe Continent forbade the writing down of the “verses” thatnthey taught in their “schools.” Their students must rely onnmemory alone. The use of letters would allow their art andnwisdom to pass into vulgar hands. The art of singing to thenharp — or playing the harp for dances — remained in thenoral tradition, like the art of the “old-time fiddler” or of thenbagpipes, Scottish or Irish.nThere is of course no lack of references to the harp andnother instruments and to singing and dancing in thenliterature of the Middle Ages. Chaucer’s Friar was annamateur harper —nAnd in his harpyng, whan that he hadde songe,nHis eyen twynkled in his heed aryght,nAs doon the sterres in the frosty nyght.nThe Clerk Nicholas of “The Miller’s Tale” played thenpsaltery and sang Angelus ad virginem so “sweetly that allnthe chamber rang,” and after it sang “The King’s Note”; hisnrival Absolon sang in a very high tenor (perhaps a falsetto orn”countertenor”) to the accompaniment of “a smal rubible”nor rebeck. The Franklin “had in remembrance” — that is,ncould recite from memory—a Breton “lai,” and Chaucernmakes him say in “The Franklin’s Prologue” that thesen”layes with hir instrumentz they songe / Or elles reddennhem for hir pleasaunce” (that is, read them out loud to anlistening company).nBut this oral tradition was much older than Chaucer’sntime and had deeper roots and wider provenience than wen20/CHRONICLESnmight suspect from a study of Chaucer’s courtly productions,nwhich are literary in the then-new French mannerneven while they remain sturdily English in so manynimpressive ways. The medieval romance “King Alisaunder”nepitomizes the whole cultural situation in two lines:nMery hit is in halle to here the harpenTheo mynstral syngith, theo jogolour carpith.nThe “audience” in the great hall includes all “degrees,” notnonly the king and the nobility but other persons of the feudalncommunity, whether of palace, castle, or manor house.nEven monasteries at certain times might invite the minstrelnto sing or recite. The tale that is “told” is sung to the harp innthe earlier stages; or it may be recited; and later, when thentale (that is, the “romance”) is written down, it finally comesnto be read out. We should not confuse the minstrel of earlierntimes, who may himself be the bard or creative poet, withnthe beggady entertainers of a later time when books andnbroadsides have begun to exert their modern influence. Thenlyric of tradition was produced—like the romance, ballad,nand mystery play — in a cultural situation like that describednby John Speirs in his discussion of alliterative romances andnpoems:nThere is ample evidence not only that in the earlyncommunities poetry was oral but that there was anclass of men, highly honoured by nobles and kingsnfor their skill and insight, whose whole occupationnin life was poetry, and who composed and recitednlong poems which they did not write down andnmany of which were never written down.nWhat we know, then, with complete certainty, is that thenlyric poets, as we call them, of the Middle Ages, even in thendecline of the medieval culture, do not set out to composen”poems.” They make songs for definite and rather practicalnThe poetry of tradition has a place in Hfe, anuse in life; it is not a fancy thing, not anluxury, not a toy, not sheer entertainment.npurposes. The purposes may be lofty — as in a hymn ornlaude for Christ, the Virgin, or a saint; or merely jovial, as inna drinking song for the tavern; or useful, as in the traditionalnrhyme for remembering the number of days in the 12nmonths. Exceedingly popular was Lydgate’s rhymed catalog,n”The Kings of England”—15 stanzas in rhyme royal,nlaboriously arranging the monarchs from William of Normandynto Henry VI. Robbins reports this menace to thenmedieval schoolboy’s happiness as being found in 46nmanuscripts. Briefer was the medical student’s rhymednhelper for remembering teeth, bones, and veins:nXXXII teth that bethe full kene,nCCbonys and Nyntene,nCCC vaynys syxty and fyve,nEuery man hathe that is alyve.nnn