A Minstrel was a professional entertainer of any kind, from the 12th century to the 17th. A juggler, acrobat,
story-teller, etc. or more specifically, a professional secular musician, usually an instrumentalist. The heyday
of minstrelsy was chiefly within the period c1250-c1500.
While the organization of musical life and therefore the social status of the minstrel differed from one
region to another, it is clear that some secular musicians of the later Middle Ages were completely outside the
predominant social structure; along with entertainers and other professions, they had no fixed abode and
owed allegiance to no civil or ecclesiastical authority.
With the Romantic reawakening of interest in the culture of the Middle Ages, 'minstrel' became
frequent in the special sense of wandering poet-musician, and to this day the word evokes the image of the
itinerant singer accompanying himself on a plucked string instrument before an audience of knights and their
ladies - a real enough phenomenon but only one among many in the range of medieval secular music.
One traditional role that has fascinated scholarship since the 18th century is that of the bard or epic
poet-singer. He is usually supposed to have recited his lengthy tales to simple melodic formulae
cooresponding in their articulation and repititions to the half-lines, lines and couplets of epic or narrative
verse; he is also thought to have supported his song with an instrument such as the harp or fiddle.
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