Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/B/Blondel
Blondel. A rhymer or minstrel to Richard I., King of England, about the year 1190. Whilst his master, being a prisoner of the Duke of Austria, was pining in a tower in Germany, Mendel traversed the whole of the Holy Land, and all parts of Germany, in search of the king, whom he at length discovered to be confined in the castle of Lowenstein, by singing, near the walls of the castle, a song which the king and himself had jointly composed. This anecdote furnished the subject of Gr�try's beautiful opera, "Richard Occur de Lion."