Blondel

Blondel, a celebrated French minstrel of the 12th century, born at Nesle, in Picardy, was a favourite of King Richard the Lion-heart, and accompanied him to Palestine. When, in 1193, Richard on his homeward journey was seized and imprisoned by Leopold, Duke of Austria, the minstrel wandered through Germany in disguise seeking his master, and at length came to the castle of Dürrenstein, in Austria, in which he heard that there was some illustrious captive. He placed himself under the tower and commenced singing a love-song which Richard and he had composed together. Hardly had he finished the first stanza, when a well-known voice from the tower took up the second, and carried it on to the end. So the minstrel discovered his monarch, and, returning with all speed to England, was the means of his being ransomed by his subjects. Unfortunately, this story rests solely on the French Chronicle of Rheims, belonging to the latter half of the 13th century; its popularity dates only from Grétry's opera (1784). The poems that have come down to us under Blondel's name are poor and uninteresting; they are published by Tarbé in the Collection des Poètes Champenois (vol. xix. Rheims, 1862).