In France, too, the vagrant appears as the original type of popular singer. He ran from one end of the land to the other. Received and even invited by the great lords he went from castle to castle, his head filled with songs, or his pockets with parchments--if, indeed, he could read. Perchance he would stop in the common of some village, play a few stray _arpeggios_ on his viol, and, having collected an enthusiastic audience, sing a _complainte_, the adventures of a favorite hero, or perhaps recount the story of a celebrated crime, embellished with horrifying details. Again he might sing a love romance, or even a scriptural _légende_--the 'Prodigal Son’ or some other parable, the life of a saint, or the Passion of our Lord.
With the growth of the cities and the development of the middle class the wandering minstrel lost popularity in Germany, even among the people. His itinerant life bred a disregard of social customs and conventions which caused no little concern among the respectable burghers of larger communities, and both the _Sachsenspiegel_ and the _Schwabenspiegel_, chronicles of the thirteenth century, record the fact that minstrels were outside the social pale and even excluded from membership in the church. Yet these same outcasts of the church, excluded from its sacraments, would gather the faithful in the cathedral square and, exciting the people’s fancy with sacred legends and miracles, would, as it were, become the self-appointed allies of the clergy. But at last, in uncompromising opposition to them, the resident musicians of the towns associated themselves in the manner of guilds and monopolized the privilege of furnishing music for public functions, being employed and paid by the city councils. The earliest musicians’ guild of this kind was the _Nikolaibrüderschaft_ (Brotherhood of St. Nicholas), organized in Vienna in 1288. Its management was entrusted to a high official, the _Musikantenvogt_, later _Oberspielgraf_, who represented the highest tribunal in matters of music. The policy of these musicians’ guilds was similar to that of musicians’ unions of the present day. In a district covered by the guilds only persons enrolled as paying members were allowed to play or sing for money.