but, just now, the point of most interest is not the pilgrim so much
as the minstrel 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
predecessors, the monumental poets of Norman-English literature.
Wace, whose rhymed history of the Norman dukes, which he called the
"Roman de Rou," or "Rollo," is an English classic of the first rank,
was a canon of Bayeux when William of Saint-Pair was writing at
Mont-Saint-Michel. His rival Benoist, who wrote another famous
chronicle on the same subject, was also a historian, and not a
singer. In that day literature meant verse; elegance in French prose