Mendicants were of course assembled by the score, together with strolling soldiers returned from Palestine (according to their own account at least); pedlars were displaying their wares, travelling mechanics were enquiring after employment, and wandering palmers, hedge-priests, Saxon minstrels, and Welch bards, were muttering prayers, and extracting mistuned dirges from their harps, crowds,[1] and rotes. One sent forth the praises of Athelstane in a doleful panegyric; another, in a Saxon genealogical poem, rehearsed the uncouth and harsh names of his noble ancestry. Jesters and jugglers were not awanting, nor was the occasion of the assembly supposed to render the exercise of their profession indecorous or improper. Indeed the ideas of the Saxons on these occasions were as natural as they were rude. If sorrow was thirsty, there was drink—if hungry, there was food—if it sunk
- ↑ The crowth or crowd was a species of violin. The rote a sort of guitar, the strings of which were managed by a kind of wheel, from which the instrument took its name.
