The Minstrel's Tale

The Minstrel’s Tale

A courtly minstrel was there, a man who might have been a youth, but could have passed for as old as sixty years, I guess. He was long-limbed and fair, with hair as curly and white as a newborn lamb. Under one arm he carried his golden harp, and all present agreed that he played it with all the light and sweetness of Apollo. He was clad in a costly garment of silk embroidered with arabesques and foreign flowers. That fine silk was lined with ermine whiter than his hair; both were gifts from his king and patron, who prized him more highly than all the musicians and jesters at court. The minstrel came mounted upon a dappled gray steed (also a generous gift from the king at his wedding feast), on which he carried a satchel full of various instruments for the entertainment of nobility. On his shoulder he carried a small monkey, a creature he acquired from a wandering magician, and which he himself trained, he said, to grovel at the king’s feet and kiss his fingers. Away from court, the youth loved nothing more than good drink and good food, of which he had his fill and then sang like a nightingale of ignoble knights and corrupt kings.

In just such a temperament was he at the close of the Knight’s tale, when he let out a tinkling peal of laughter and his trained monkey followed suit with a high cackle. “God save all this noble company, indeed, good sir knight, for your knights were noble and loved truly. However, I must tell you of knights I have known who never did act honorably or serve their ladies heart, soul, and might as Palamon did Emily. Truthfully I say, a noble name does not make a noble man.”

“Although I am the King’s favorite minstrel, he loves me not for my fine rhymes or sharp wit, but for the sweetness of truth which is always on my lips and in the light notes of my golden harp. To protect myself I may not always sing the same truths to him which I sing to others, but I will relay one for you now that speaks truthfully of noble love and jealous pride.”

Once, in a great and opulent city in the land of Brittany, there lived two brave knights of noble name: Sir Astor and Sir Bacon. Both had been away for years in the Holy Land and had just recently returned from their quest. They were praised highly by the king for their feats of strength and honor. Sir Astor brought back a ship full of treasures: exotic birds and valuable manuscripts, fragrant tea leaves and strange instruments of science. Sir Bacon carried with him the spoils of war: stolen wealth from conquered cities, and contracts of land, which he bestowed upon the king.

The king, overjoyed at Sir Bacon’s many military accomplishments, could not give him enough gifts in praise and gratitude. Rich garments he gave him, silks embroidered in gold thread, sacks overflowing with sapphires, emeralds, and rubies, a hundred flasks of the kingdom’s finest wine and fifty brawny steeds as black as night, and also a fair number of peacocks. After these gifts were given, the king said, “Sir Bacon, I have bestowed many gifts of value unto you, and yet I feel that none are worthy

of a knight so noble. Tell me, is there anything else of mine you covet that I may give to you in return for your honorable services to me?”

Sir Bacon replied, “I stand humbled, your majesty, by the many worthy gifts you have given me. However, there is just one more thing that I covet more than anything: your youngest and fairest daughter, the maiden Imogene, to be my wife and lady.”

The king hesitated briefly before replying, “Noble knight, you shall have my Imogene for your wife and lady, if you swear to serve her humbly for the remainder of your years and love her honorably, for Imogene will have none but one who loves truly and is truly noble.”

So Lady Imogene and Sir Bacon were married the very next day, and as a wedding gift the king gave them a beautiful castle made of dark stone, which had a fair green lawn for Sir Bacon to hold tournaments and beautiful gardens to keep his pet peacocks.

Now, let us not forget good Sir Astor, though the king very nearly did. As a gift for his feats in the Holy Land, the king deigned to give him a fair castle, as well, made of stone as white as alabaster, though with a rather smaller lawn than Sir Bacon’s. The two castles, one bright and one dark, stood so close to one another that Sir Astor could look out the window of his chamber and see lovely Imogene walking in the May rose gardens below. Soon, he was struck with love.

Imogene herself was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with her marriage to Sir Bacon. While she walked alone in the gardens, touching each rose with a white hand and gently feeding her husband’s peacocks from her skirts, Sir Bacon would gamble in the

dining hall, drinking until he became crude and violent. Or he would hunt all day with his squires and then dump a few bloody carcasses down on the dining hall table before

dutifully visiting Imogene in her chamber. She quickly realized that he did not love her any more than she loved him, and that she was nothing to him but another spoil of war.

One day as Imogene tended to her roses, she found a white scroll tied to the neck of her favorite peacock with a strand of fine red silk. Upon opening it, she found an impassioned avowal of love from an anonymous suitor, praising all her features in intelligent language that she knew she couldn’t attribute to her own husband.

“Fair Lady Bacon,” the letter read, at which Imogene cringed, “you are lovelier in my eyes than any flower in your garden to which you tend so well, and nobler by far than any fairy, queen, or goddess. I know you cannot return my love, but I will be content to serve you humbly and anonymously for the rest of my days, if you will but listen each night to my singing, which I do for you only.”

That night, Lady Imogene strode quietly from her chamber to stand at the window, which looked over the moonlit garden. Presently, she heard the angelic notes of a harp coming from the tall stone wall which separated her garden from Sir Astor’s, accompanied by a voice unlike any she had ever heard before. It was tender and insisting, bird-like but strong. She listened until the edges of the world became tinged with gold, and then reluctantly returned to bed.

The next night, Imogene prepared a letter to give to the angelic singer, begging him to show his face and accept a token of her love. When she heard the longed-for voice, she deftly tied her letter to the leg of one of her pet doves, and threw it flapping

over the wall of the garden. The strumming stopped abruptly, and Sir Astor’s shining, moonlit face appeared. Imogene’s heart thrilled with happiness and love, for she

remembered Sir Astor from the feast her father had held to celebrate the coming-home of all the knights. She had found him to be fairer and nobler than the rest, and had longed to see up close those beautiful exotic birds that he had brought with him. She sent down a second dove, this one with a small square of embroidered silk as a token.

After that, night after night would Lady Imogene steal away from her bed to listen to her love sing in the garden below, always sending him messages by dove, and they would look upon one another’s faces until early morning.

Eventually, Sir Bacon began to suspect his wife, and spite and malice grew in his heart towards her, where there had once been merely pride and indifference. When he asked her where she disappeared to so often, the lady quickly thought to reply, “Sir, it is the song of the nightingale that keeps me awake. It sings so beautifully, more beautifully than a harp or flute, that my desire to hear it is far greater than my desire for sleep.”

With a malevolence that gripped him, Sir Bacon decided to send out his many servants to capture this nightingale so that his lady would have no more excuse to leave her chamber at night. They fashioned nets and clever traps so that they would be sure to catch the songbird that very evening, which they did, bringing it triumphantly to their lord.

Sir Bacon laughed maliciously and took the live bird to Imogene, saying, “Here, wife, I have brought you that troublesome bird whose song was keeping you awake when you wanted to sleep; now you will no longer have to leave the chamber at night to listen to its song.”

Imogene’s heart sank as she realized she would no longer be able to meet Sir

Astor in the nighttime, or listen to his lovely singing. She asked her husband for the nightingale, planning to give it to her love as a parting gift since she would see him no more. Sir Bacon, with madness in his eyes, made to give the songbird to his wife—but then, with one merciless twist of his huge hands, he tore the bird’s head off and threw its broken body on her knees. Though the bird’s innocent blood soaked Imogene’s gown and spattered her throat, she cupped the tiny thing in her hands and wept for its life and her own.

The lady was very troubled, knowing that Sir Astor would certainly think she no longer loved him if she ceased to watch his playing from her window. She quickly decided she must send the bird’s body to him with tidings of what had passed between her and Sir Bacon. The moment she heard her husband’s bugle call beginning that day’s hunt, she hurriedly called her most trusted servant to her chamber and charged him with the task of bearing to Sir Astor the dead nightingale, wrapped tenderly in her last piece of embroidered silk.

When Sir Astor heard all that the young servant had to relate, he gathered the nightingale’s body in his hands as his lady had and fell to his knees, weeping. He vowed to carry the bird with him wherever he went, as an amulet that would protect him. He had a tiny box fashioned of white marble, inlaid with gold and many fine jewels. He laid the nightingale down in its silken shroud embroidered with finest thread by Imogene, and sealed shut the box forevermore.

Several weeks later, Sir Astor was riding his steed through the woods, lonely and mourning the loss of his love, when he came upon a lovely clearing. The grass was dark green and downy, a clear brook trickled through the middle of it, and flowers of all colors bloomed abundantly there. Does, bucks, and rabbits frolicked about and drank tranquilly from the stream. Sir Astor dismounted and said, “The beauty of this place may soothe my broken heart and drive away my loneliness.”

Just then, a lady and several ladies-in-waiting rode into the clearing on snow-white horses. The lady was beautiful, with skin like milk and hair like spun gold. When she saw Sir Astor kneeling in the clearing, weeping with his little box, she dismounted and approached him.

“Good sir knight, why do you weep so in this clearing?” she inquired.

“Because my love has been kept from me by her malicious husband who loves her not, and I have only this dead nightingale in a box to remember her by.”

The good lady bade him to rise, saying, “Go back to your castle and unseal your box. You will find the nightingale alive and with a song lovelier than any bird or human. Send this nightingale to your love, and she will be able to leave her castle and her husband unharmed by him.” With this, she remounted her steed and she and her ladies-in-waiting seemed to disappear in a mist.

Sir Astor, filled with joy at the possibility of being reunited with Imogene, decided to do as the lady had bade him to do, and tucked the little box safely into his horse’s satchel before riding off into the woods at a gallop.

When he got back to his castle, he said a short prayer before breaking the seal on the box he had wrought so painstakingly just a few short weeks earlier. A nightingale, alive and as perfectly pristine as though it had been fashioned from angels’ hands, fluttered out and landed without a sound on Sir Astor’s windowsill. As it began to sing, Sir Astor felt he had been lifted up to heaven. With that, the nightingale flew out the window, over the garden wall, and into the Lady Imogene’s chamber window.

Minutes later, that fair lady stepped from the castle that had been her prison for so long, holding that sweetly singing bird in her hands. She and Sir Astor were reunited and for the first time could embrace one another as lovers. They rode away from that place, preceded and protected by the song of the nightingale.

Critical Discussion

This tale is a Breton lai reworked from a well-known Breton lai by Marie de France, most commonly known as the Lay of the Laustic, or, the Lay of the Nightingale. I changed very little of the original plotline, but what I did change I did so that the tale would adhere more closely to the Breton lai genre, and so the employment of the dramatic principle would be more apparent. It follows the Breton lai genre because firstly, it is a romance whose thematics revolve mainly around gender dynamics, since the female is actually the protagonist (although she does not necessarily have the power). In my story, the male characters are less in control of themselves: the lady’s husband, a particularly brutish and unsavory character, becomes so angry with his wife that he kills a bird with his hands and throws it at her. I added the fairy woman in the woods because fairies and magic are common elements in Breton lais, and that also allowed for the story to end in a way that was more satisfying than the original. While this ending is perhaps not as open-ended as some lais, it does have a similar ending to “Lanval,” another Breton lai by Marie de France. I also reworked the story specifically so that the brutishness of the husband would be clearer and less ambiguous than it is in the original story. This way, the underlying moral—that noblemen are not always noble men—would be more apparent.

This moral is central to the employment of the dramatic principle because the storyteller, a minstrel, is a lower-class member of the court. While some members of court may wish for upward mobility, as the franklin does in “The Canterbury Tales,” I decided to give this minstrel a more satirical personality. Although he is obviously on good terms with his king, since the king bestows many gifts on him (Bumke 229), he is also in a position to observe nobility freely and to comment on their shortcomings (Goetz 190). Since I based him loosely on Apollo, the Greek god of music who also happens to always tell the truth, I decided he should do more of an exposé piece revealing some truth about nobility. I chose to make the adulterous neighbor in my story a musician so that the dramatic principle would again be employed. With the motif of the nightingale appearing throughout the lai, not just in the wife’s lie to her husband, the theme of music becomes central to the minstrel’s tale in addition to his moral agenda. The Breton lai would be an appropriate genre for a minstrel to tell because it is a more elevated form of storytelling. Although the minstrel does not desire upward mobility, it still makes sense for him to use an elevated style because it is what he is surrounded by at court.

I chose to give the minstrel such splendid clothing because, even though a minstrel is lower-class, minstrels were often given opulent gifts, especially of clothes and horses, by their kings (Bumke 229, 230). In addition to music, minstrels were usually skilled in a number of other areas of entertainment, such as acting, dancing, tightrope walking, magic, and animal training (Goetz 190). This is why I chose to give the minstrel a trained monkey. I decided it would be appropriate for the minstrel to reveal some shortcoming of nobility because while court minstrels were expected to praise their

patrons, they also had a unique privilege in being able to scold or mock them. This was dreaded by those being mocked, but tolerated (Bumke 505).

Although marriages were sanctioned by the Church and therefore considered to be sanctioned by God (Guerreau-Jalabert 912), I decided it would be okay for the lady to run away from her husband with her lover since there is a precedence of adultery in Medieval literature, as in the case of Lancelot and Guinevere. In much Arthurian literature, adultery is actually justified, even “extolled, inasmuch as it implies an intrepid loyalty to the higher law of...courtly love” (de Rougemont 24). The romance between the wife and the neighbor exemplifies courtly love because the neighbor has sworn to serve her, whereas her husband does not.

Like Chaucer, I attempted to use an element of satire. I also tried to use “quyting,” in the minstrel’s initial address to the knight when he says that he will tell him a more truthful story about nobility.

Works Cited

Bumke, Joachim. Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High MiddleAges. Trans. Thomas Dulap. Berkeley: University of California Press. 229-230, 502-505.

Goetz, Hans-Werner. Life in the Middle Ages from the Seventh to the Thirteenth Century. Trans. Albert Wimmer. Ed. Steven Rowan. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993. 190-192.

Guerreau-Jalabert, Anita. "Marriage." Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. Ed. Andre Vauchez. Vol. 2. Chicago: James Clarke & Co., 2000. 912-13. Print.

De, Rougemont, Denis. Love in the Western world. New York: Schocken Books, 1990. 24.

Shoaf, Judith P., trans. "Laustic." Netserf.org. 1991. Web. 20 Nov. 2009. <http://web.english.ufl.edu/exemplaria/marie/laustic.pdf>.