LA CHANSON  DE ROLAND                           I7
Whanne that April with his shoures sote
The droughte of March hath perced to the rote   . .
Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken strange strondes . . .
And especially, from every shires ende
Of Englelonde, to Canterbury they wende
The holy blisful martyr for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seke.
The passion for pilgrimages was universal among our ancestors as far
back as we can trace them. For at least a thousand years it was their
chief delight, and is not yet extinct. To feel the art of Mont-Saint-
Michel and Chartres we have got to become pilgrims again: but, just
now, the point of most interest is not the pilgrim so much as the min-
strel who sang to amuse him, — the jugleor or jongleur, — who was at
home in every abbey, castle or cottage, as well as at every shrine. The
jugleor became a jongleur and degenerated into the street-juggler; the
minstrel, or menestrier, became very early a word of abuse, equivalent
to blackguard; and from the beginning the profession seems to have
been socially decried, like that of a music-hall singer or dancer in
later times; but in the eleventh century, or perhaps earlier still, the
jongleur seems to have been a poet, and to have composed the songs he
sang. The immense mass of poetry known as the " Chansons de Geste "
seems to have been composed as well as sung by the unnamed Homers
of France, and of all spots in the many provinces where the French
language in its many dialects prevailed, Mont-Saint-Michel should
have been the favourite with the jongleur, not only because the swarms
of pilgrims assured him food and an occasional small piece of silver, but
also because Saint Michael was the saint militant of all the warriors
whose exploits in war were the subject of the "Chansons de Geste."
William of Saint-Pair was a priest-poet; he was not a minstrel, and his
"Roman" was not a chanson; it was made to read, not to recite; but
the "Chanson de Roland" was a different affair.
So it was, too, with William's contemporaries and rivals or prede-
cessors, the monumental poets of Norman-English literature. Wace,