minstrel: Something interesting.

[Rex Deaver]

At 10:09 AM 8/20/97 +1000, Martin Hungerford wrote:

>Sometime ago on this list there was a good discusion about the "our right 
>to sing out without fear of retaliation." The result of which was that it 
>was more commonly our right to be hanged for being common vagabonds.

I was going to comment on that "bardic privilege" thing, but skipped it.  It
is a great myth within the SCA that bards/minstrels had some form of
immunity.  Only in one small area, during a particular time, was that ever
the case.  Other areas/times there was often a more informal protection...if
you hanged a bard, likely no other would come to your hall and the rest
would spread satires of you far and wide.  In heroic societies, this was a
real threat.

But for the minstrels the only available protections were a fast horse or a
powerful patron...preferably both, since patrons are notoriously fickle :):):)

Mathurin

----
Rex Deaver
rdeaver at cgro.com	
"Fix the problem. Not the blame."


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