For guts, some write, ere they are sodden,
Are fit for music, or for pudden;
From whence men borrow every kind
Of minstrelsy, by string or wind.[1]
His grisly beard was long and thick, 125
With which he strung his fiddle-stick;
For he to horse-tail scorn'd to owe
For what on his own chin did grow.
Chiron, the four-legg'd bard,[2] had both
A beard and tail of his own growth; 130
And yet by authors 'tis averr'd,
He made use only of his beard.
In Staffordshire, where virtuous worth
Does raise the minstrelsy, not birth:[3]
"Where bulls do choose the boldest king [4] 135
And ruler o'er the men of string;
As once in Persia, 'tis said,
Kings were proclaim'd b' a horse that neigh'd;[5]
- ↑ This whimsical notion is borrowed from a chapter 'de peditu,' in the Facetiæ Facetiarum, afterwards amplified in Dean Switft's Benefit of F—g explained, where Dr Blow is quoted as asserting in his 'Fundaments' of Music, that the first discovery of harmony was owing to persons of different sizes and sexes sounding different notes of music from their fundaments. An Essay equally whimsical, on the origin of wind-music, will be found in the Spectator, No. 361. An anonymous Essay on this subject is attributed to the Hon. C. J. Fox.
- ↑ Chiron the Centaur, who, besides being the most famous physician of his time, and teacher of Æsculapius, was an expert musician, and Apollo's governor. He now forms the Sagittarius of the Zodiac.
- ↑ The Minstrel's Charter and Ceremonies are given in Plott's Staffordshire, p. 436.
- ↑ This alludes to the custom of bull-running in the manor of Tutbury in Staffordshire, where was a charter granted by John of Gaunt, and confirmed by Henry VI., appointing a king of the minstrels, who was to have a bull for his property, which should be turned out by the prior of Tutbury, if his minstrels, or any one of them, could cut off a piece of his skin before he ran into Derbyshire; but if the bull got into that county sound and unhurt, the prior was to have his bull again. This custom, being productive of much mischief, was, at the request of the inhabitants and by order of the Duke of Devonshire, lord of the manor, discontinued about the year 1788.
- ↑ Darius, elected King of Persia, under the agreement of the seven princes, who met on horseback, that the crown should devolve on him whose horse neighed first. By the ingenious device of his groom, the horse of Darius
alludes to Crowdero's ear, which lay upon the fiddle; the latter to the strings of the fiddle, which are made of catgut.
