Books › The heart of music; the story of the violin, 1906 › scan 141
Scan 141
The heart of music; the story of the violin, 1906
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1The Heart of Music
3Beverley, Canterbury, or Dutton. John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, gave the English minstrels a charter granting them the right to appoint a minstrel king, who should have full control over them, in lieu of the ordinary legal restrictions and protection. In the fourteenth century we find Richard II giving John Caroney the musician a passport in which the bearer is described as "Rex Ministrallorum Nostrorum (The King of our Minstrels)." Walter Haliday, another music maker, was so far recognised as to be awarded by the Crown eighteen marks (about five dollars) a year for his skill! This munificent generosity was sufficiently rare to be recorded in more than one chronicle; and as a matter of fact the singers of songs and players of viols received but little recognition or encouragement in those days from the powers that were.
5It was from these men, despised, outlawed, unprotected, and unprivileged, that the violin came to us at last. From the beginning of time, as we have seen, music was unhonoured; the place of musicians was with the buffoons, the dogs, not even with the servants, so low was their estate. We know this was true in Egypt and the other ancient nations; we find the conditions unchanged in mediæval France and England, Spain and
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